Tiger Chronicles: Exodus
by Crazy Rob
Summary: Malefideism is spreading. Sadists and imbeciles are the carriers. In an attempt to briefly escape the atrocities brought about by "Get With The Program!", teens and adolescents congregate to a park to attempt to have a few weeks of peace away from their tormentors. Sadism, however, is an addiction, and the Malefidians will have their fix one way or another...
1. The Plague Spreads

Tiger Chronicles: Exodus

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Calvin and Hobbes. I don't own any comic strips. This is probably a good thing.

 _"It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished."_ __

 _"But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, 'whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,' and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever."_

-John Adams

PROLOGUE: The Plague Spreads

...

Malefideism and its books were a plague, and those who had their wits about them identified it as such.

Retailers refused to carry it. Online shippers refused to sell it. Whether out of moral disgust or a realization that association with such a cult would end only in tears, only small niche groups could be sought out for a copy of "Get with The Program!".

A statement was released by President Obama that no amendment covered the actions suggested in the book, nor those executed in the recent months, in an attempt to dissolve any remaining delusions the law would ever be on Malefideism's side.

This did not deter some hard core groups, however…

…

Palenski had a shit eating grin, and was unapologetic for it. For times of genuine contentment, he used a small smile, the grin for when a façade was needed. It could, however, mean any number of things. Inattentiveness, trying to appease someone, trying to appear disarming, or, in this case…

Before him was a small group of the most unlikable people he'd met in his career, and he'd spoken to some assholes who wanted to make a NAMBLA convention in his city. They wore sneers of contempt as they marched into his office, and demanded- not requested- _demanded_ they be allowed to protest at the upcoming graduation for Verdant Junior High.

Now Leonardo Palenski wore his shark's grin. Eyes narrowed to slits. Anyone who had worked with him knew that this was the kind of expression Palenski wore when he was deciding how to destroy you. The five before him had no such knowledge.

"An _armed protest_? Of the school that was shot up by those Highweller thugs? I normally try to keep things civil, you understand… but… please…" Palenski leaned forward. "Do you think I'm fucking stupid?"

There were several armed policemen- from the remaining group that actually had a spine after Palenski had cleaned house- in the room with him. Two of them he knew had family affected by the recent events. One other had expressed disturbing fantasies of what he would do to one of them, given the chance. The last one had dismissed them all as domestic terrorists who needed a bullet in the brain.

It felt _good_ to have people with the right attitude in the room with him.

"I mean, seriously, have you not watched the news? We just got done dealing with an attempted nuclear attack on American soil, the first in recorded history. There are still military personnel asking me and my people questions down to what brand toilet paper we use. Before that, we dealt with this guy named Highweller. You may have heard about him, attacked an innocent girl, shot up a school, blew up a hospital… let me tell you, those were some fun months." He hoped the sarcasm dripping from his words would have some effect. No such luck.

 _My God, the book really does kill brain cells._

"Lemme tell **you** something, Putinski" a large woman, decked in gaudy jewelry that clashed with her sweatshirt and sweatpants, stepped forward, and Palenski couldn't help but recoil, the stench of her arrogance was overpowering…

…no, wait, that was body odor, garlic, and… oh sweet mother of Jesus, did no one teach these people how to wipe properly?...

"I've taught for five years in high school, and out of all the nambly-pambly nonsense about 'every kid is good at heart'…"

…Oh hell, that was what he thought it was! Was it in her pants? Was it several of them?! Would he need to have the carpets cleaned again?!

"…I whipped her good for correcting me, and what do I get? Does anyone bother to ask how I feel?!..."

They were nodding in assent with her, the black man with the shaved head, the only one who had bothered to dress up… the blonde crewcut white-t-shirt bullet headed gym teacher from hell, the bloated white-guy with xxxxl jeans… He'd give Malefideism that, it brought people from all walks together… couldn't any of them smell it?

Several of the police officers seemed to be wrinkling their nose. Okay, it wasn't just him.

"…seen it before, a dozen times, and we're seeing it again! By Malefides' law of External Parenting, we Concerned Elders demand the right to assess whether or not these deviants are fit to roam free-"

"Okay let me stop you right fucking there." Palenski shoved an index finger, pointing up, in her face. "First, you beat up a little girl for saying the sun doesn't revolve around the earth. That's both incredibly cruel and indicative that whoever hired you to teach a science class was high- God, I hope they were high. Second, for the love of… whoever you worship, woman, _learn! To wipe! Your ass!"_

She stumbled back, clearly shocked.

"Yes, we can all smell it. It's like someone drowned a skunk in an overflowing port-a-potty. Third, just because some lunatic who got plastic surgery to avoid being arrested for killing nearly every kid in his church wrote a… I won't call it a book… a step by step tutorial on how to kill kids and said it was okay doesn't override over two centuries of U.S. law. You come in here and ask me for permission to barge into a Junior High graduation with guns and decide who deserves to live and who doesn't? **Are you all fucking brain damaged?!"**

"I don't think you understand." The well-dressed man stepped forward. "We come in the name of two authorities, the authority of God almighty-"

Oh good, he was one of _those_ pastors…

"-and the authority of James Malefides, deliverer of the word and gospel. When we came here, we did it to be polite, to let you know in advance what's going to happen. We will separate the wheat, if any, from the chaff, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it!"

"Not a damn thing?" Palenski repeated blandly. "You mean, like, let the very angry soldiers and marines in our city know about your plans?"

The pastor took a breath. "You have a daughter, right? In the second grade?" He crossed his arms in an effort to appear intimidating. "Would you like for her to see third?"

His eyes went from hateful and intimidating to cross-eyed, focused on the long barrel of metal aimed between his eyes, belonging to Palenski's personal .357.

The display of speed cowed the others, allowing the four officers to handcuff them in short order. The pastor didn't resist, his eyes focused on the business end of the gun that hadn't been there a split second ago.

"Congratulations." Palenski's voice was mechanical, the symptom of very deliberately holding back what he knew would be volcanic fury, if he let it flow unchecked. "You all just made my personal shit-list. That was a terroristic threat. The kind that sees you doing five to ten, and let me give you my personal assurance that Malefidiots do NOT do well in our prisons."

"So let me make sure that **you** understand. Pressing those kinds of charges against you? That's **me** being nice. That is mercy you **will not** see again. With all the shit that has happened, no one in this city would blink if I were to ask these fine gentlemen to blow your heads off. If you threaten anyone else, I will kill you personally… no, wait, you know what? You threaten anyone else, and I'll lock you in a room with Officer Brandon and a pair of rusty garden shears. From what I'm given to understand, after his son got hurt in the Verdant shooting, he has some wonderful ideas on how to use them."

They were dragged, rather subdued, from his office, and Palenski felt proud of himself…

Then he looked down where the woman had been standing…

…and sighed.

He hit his intercom button. "Ms. Carol, call the carpet cleaners." He said with a groan.

"…and tell Officer Brandon to forward the bill for dry cleaning to me."

…

Mistakes were made during parenting. It happened. You corrected them, and you moved on.

One of those mistakes, Paul Creekson learned, was punishing your child for something they didn't do. You made it up to them. You apologized. You promised to do better, then you moved on.

And that might have worked, six years ago.

Now?

"Son, please, let's just talk-"

" **FUCK YOU!** "

They were cold, cruel, hateful words. He looked to his wife, Natalie, and she grimaced.

Who could blame him? Six years blamed for a theft from the church that never happened. Six years of ostracism and constant punishment. A few months ago, it had been revealed that their son Kyle had **not** stolen an envelope full of donations when he was six.

That was the time to apologize, he knew now. They had not.

The church, his teachers, and his own parents had all agreed that this was a test from God and he would be stronger for it, and he needed to keep doing some of the things assigned to him as punishment- mowing lawns for elderly members of the church, doing housework for others, and not using computers or phones to complain- so that he would realize that God had a purpose for his pain.

They were going to have him forgive everyone, last Sunday, when one of the elderly women he had been made to work for, a cruel, snarly woman, called him "Thief" one last time as a cruel joke…

…and he **snapped.**

Years of paddling, whippings, slappings, curses, "lost" homework and tests all came crashing down in a display of adolescent wrath. One of the church members, a beefy man who had punched him to the floor on several occasions to punish him for his supposed theft, tried to block the way out of the church to get him to calm down.

That earned him a fractured wrist, the consequence of trying to block the path of a berserk child wielding a chair.

He had marched home on the road, and they had driven alongside him, begging him to at least let them drive him home, but he had staggered, stumbled, and marched on his own power to their front door, furiously shaking them off when they tried to hug him and retreating to his room.

"Honey, please, we know you're upset, but Mrs. Jennings was just kidding!" His mother pleaded.

Silence.

The door ripped open.

He was 4 feet, 4 inches, weighed ninety pounds soaking wet, and pale. His hair was a crewcut, they hadn't let him have anything else since he was accused. He normally didn't look imposing at all.

But six years of punishment had killed any light in those green eyes, and what glared at them were serpent's eyes, full of primal spite.

"Kidding?" He asked, voice suddenly calm. "She was kidding?"

He suddenly ripped off his Sunday shirt, heedless of the damage he did, turned…

Paul recoiled.

"Do you see those scars? **Do you see those scars?** The ones below the ones you made when you whipped me with a belt buckle? She used a weedwhacker on my back two years ago."

He didn't need to see the raised white lines and discolored scars, he couldn't look at them- each of them told a story of how he had failed him, miserably…

"Was she kidding then? Huh? Was she kidding then? Oh, how about the sermons every other week about how the thief comes to kill, steal, and destroy and the pastor would glare at me? Was he kidding?"

"Son, just calm down-"

"Or how about Mr. Mallory, the guy who liked to fucking punch me in the face every Sunday? Was he kidding? Because you laughed when he knocked out a tooth. Was that fucking funny, mom?"

Behind his form, shaking with rage, Paul looked into his room. It was a barren cell, no books beyond the absolute essentials for school, no toys, no computer, just a desk, bed, and closet.

Even if he had stolen the money, even if they hadn't found it later, untouched, beneath the podium, he didn't deserve anything he had gotten.

"Son, listen-"

"I'm not your son, remember?" He snapped.

He remembered. He remembered those awful words, shouted in front of the congregation that first day…

 _You're not a son, you're a curse. Once you turn eighteen, you're someone else's problem._

He slammed the door in their faces.

It was evident, then, that this was not going to be one of those problems that could be resolved by the end of the day.

…

Hate.

Hate was all he had left.

Gone were the days where he could see a light at the end of the tunnel. Even after they had found proof of his innocence, their reaction was to make him keep working for those _bitches_ and make him forgive everyone because "Jesus".

They'd taken hope, joy, and peace from him, bit by bit, blow by blow, and now all he had left was Hate.

…but…

Hate had not abandoned him when his teachers did. Hate had not renounced him like his parents had. Hate had not condemned him as unredeemable as his pastor had.

Why should he abandon Hate, when it had been the only loyal friend he had ever known?

Kyle sat in the darkness of his room on his bed. Any minute now, his parents would want him to go over to Mrs. Jennings house and mow her lawn, despite her 'forgetting' that he was innocent, despite her cruelty and abuse over the years…

Because it was what Jesus would do.

 _Well, mom and dad in name only, Jesus also, according to your bible, which you have literally beaten me over the head with, also gets to damn everyone who doesn't apologize to burning forever. While we're on the subject of forgiveness, you get angry and stay angry for six years, then expect forgiveness while they still fucking punished him for something he didn't do?_

Fuck that. Fuck them.

And then it struck him, with all the mercy of Mr. Mallory's repeated kicks to his ribs when he was nine…

He hated everyone he knew. There was no other word for it. He didn't want fake apologies, he didn't want reconciliation, he wanted everybody _dead._

He made sure, making a list mentally. His teachers? Check. Classmates? Every last one of them, cruel and sadistic. His parents? Double check. Mrs. Jennings? Slow and painful. Mr. Mallory? Extra slow, extra painful. Pastor? Crucifix through chest.

He went through a list of every single human being he'd interacted with since that day when he was six, and realized there was not one single person he didn't have multiple reasons to hate with venomous passion.

He tried to think about his parents dying, like Batman, shot in an alley…

…his first impulse would be to thank the mugger.

Kyle was aware he had been kept out of the loop. All he knew was how much people hated him. His teachers had eschewed teaching him anything useful. He wasn't allowed to know about current events. And yet, still, he instinctively knew that when you were at the point where you were willing to thank the person who shot your parents…

…there was something very wrong with you.

And, now that he reflected on it… that was fine with him.

He had been good. Where had that gotten him?

…

" _There once was a asshole named Joe,_

 _He was stupid, selfish and slow._

 _I'm happy to report that his lifetime was cut short,_

 _And now Satan has a brand new Ho!"_

" _Joe Caldern had a boy, Moe, his son._

 _He asked his dad to let him shoot me for fun._

 _He was an awful guy, so I helped him die_

 _By blowing his knee out with a gun!"_

" _There once was a douche named Highweller,_

 _Who was a pretty nasty old feller,_

 _He was mean, he was crass, so God fried his ass,_

 _And now he's sick and dying like Old Yeller!"_

" _There once was a fuck named Marrin,_

 _Who made racism a daily errand,_

 _But his political clout got his fat ass knocked out,_

 _He's dead, gone, and nobody's carin'!"_

" _There was an mean bitch named Kalen_

 _Who had an incurable fetish for failin'_

 _By her I was smacked, now I've heard that she's cracked,_

 _And alas, there's no cure for her ailin'!"_

" _There was an concerned elder named Pete,_

 _Whose decisions you should not dare repeat,_

 _This assassin schmuck got his ass creamed by a truck,_

 _Instant karma, folks! Ain't it just neat?"_

" _There was an old fart, Charles Vance,_

 _Who bought into the Malefidiot Chants,_

 _But his plans were too crass, Jason Fox killed his ass,_

 _Frankly, I don't think he stood a chance!"_

" _There was a small city called Highground,_

 _The most kid-hating city around,_

 _Its citizens were dim, I killed lots of them,_

 _And now it's a looter's playground!"_

" _Samuel Orwells had a temperament quirk,_

 _He kicked my girlfriend, Susie, what a jerk!_

 _Then he fell from the sky, I guess he tried to fly,_

 _Alas, his methods don't seem to work!"_

" _Now you may not like what I wrote,_

 _And think that it's improper to gloat,_

 _But if you'd seen what I'd seen, you'd feel rather mean,_

 _And then we'd both be in the same boat!"_

-Calvin Halgin's "tribute", posted on his blog. 

…

It was not a good day to be a R.A.W. agent, Barry silently concluded.

At the moment, wherever they were, he was safe… or as safe as you could get in a massively armed cult dedicated to torturing children to death.

His security clearance was enough to know that one of their compounds had been raided. Many of their agents had been killed, some captured, children and teens had been rescued, bodies had been recovered, and people world-wide were getting pissed.

What footage he was allowed was… unsettling. Yet, alone in his room-cell, he watched it again.

At first, the Marines infiltrating the building had been precise, calm, efficient, killing with grim precision that demanded a grudging respect. There was also another solo agent, clad in red and black, who (and he required two rewinds to verify this) moonwalked as he shot up agents and breakdanced while chucking grenades, his erratic movements confounding their guards. He was shot multiple times, but that seemed to be an inconvenience at worst.

Then they had found the kids. The torture devices. The dead bodies meant for cremation.

What followed was a massacre. Technicians, food workers, R.A.W. elites… gunned down, set on fire, carved up with knives. The mercenary who had been treating his actions like a game had talked to one dying child for a few minutes, took a second to shut his eyes, then proceeded to effortlessly and efficiently kill twenty guards and spent the better part of an hour using their own implements on one of their best breakers…

…he had seen some awful ways to die. There was no audio that he was cleared to hear, but it was obvious Breaker Cash died screaming in agony. Marines surrounded the mercenary working Cash over, but didn't interfere.

Then the red-and-black monster had thrown Cash to the ground, now unrecognizable, took a piece of paper, and wrote on it in Cash's blood before bringing it up to one of the cameras…

 _I WILL FUCKING KILL ALL OF YOU._

The mercenary's name was Deadpool, and the intel on him described his normal behavior as "violently erratic". It was noted that when this erratic and whimsical behavior towards his targets ceased was when Deadpool was truly dangerous- all of the energy spent towards making the killing amusing or performing elaborate pranks during an act of espionage or sabotage was redirected into raw, focused, murderous rage, as Breaker Cash had discovered during the last agonizing hour of his life.

The rest of the footage showed him, without any apparent trace of mirth, helping carrying the bodies of the teens and children outside.

Another compound down. That meant the loss of training dummies, ransom money, torture research, personnel, sensitive information, and more fuel to the hatred almost every single country now felt for them.

On a more personal level, one of the marines involved in the raid had looked frighteningly familiar.

It took some cajoling of the techs, but facial recognition software confirmed Barry's worst fears…

Curtis had become a Marine.

A Marine, the footage attested, capable of coldly mowing down trained guards with brutal efficiency, and no qualms whatsoever about breaking one very unfortunate technician's leg in several places before dragging her outside, then returning to watch Deadpool torture Cash to death with a posture that indicated both amusement and learning observation.

There were multiple laws against torture, Barry knew this. He also knew that with each horror story released about the Grindstone camps and the R.A.W. compounds, the more the public would bay for their blood, and no one was going to shed tears for any R.A.W. agent who died slower than the rest…

An alarm on his R.A.W. issued phone beeped. It was time for another conference.

He made his way to what he deemed the "White Room", past armories, medical centers, laboratories.

The doors slid open with a mechanical hiss as he approached. No one inside looked particularly happy, not even Malefides, and he had a pretty good idea as to why.

In addition to the loss of another compound, apparently James Malefides' daughter didn't have the decency to stay dead. That, or her now deceased mother was a lousy shot. Either way, she had spilled the beans as to James Malefides being Matthew Wellfields, ex-pastor of the first church of child abuse, and while quick acting had preserved, if not strengthened, the loyalty of Malefidians, it had pissed off everyone else to new magnitudes.

He didn't dare make a quip as he took his seat. Grant, looking somber, spoke first.

"I don't need to tell you all that things are grim." He said quietly. "We are, suffice to say, not going to win any popularity contests. Intel says that multiple agencies are beginning to cooperate to find and take out our compounds and camps. The media attention is going to mean standard collection of training dummies and ransom revenue isn't going to be as viable as it once was. We've had to sever our phone lines we once used for confirmation of pick-ups, and our Terra Firma bases are on high-alert with orders to self-destruct in case of doubt. The High Ups say to remain calm, but I don't think I need to explain to anyone here that we are all expendable compared to R.A.W.'s long-term survival."

"Malefideism," he continued, nodding at Malefides, "is going to be our best bet for recruitment for the foreseeable future. Sad to say, that means we will be taking anything we can get. The majority of Malefidians have very little to no combat experience, meaning we will need to focus on getting them combat ready. Make no mistake- the metahumans who have codes against killing **will** eschew those rules if it comes to open war. We already know of one metahuman in Newden who takes pleasure in killing anyone who gets in his way."

Calvin Halgins. There was a problem.

A moratorium had come down from High Father himself, if an exasperated Grant was to be believed, that his family and friends were not to be targeted, lest they die and the reality-warping adolescent went thermonuclear- which, Barry noted with a shudder, was a distinct possibility.

He had a rough draft of a plan- one bound to be extremely unpopular- that would require R.A.W. going dark for a while. Lull him into a false sense of security. Then strike when he least expected it- sniper, most likely.

Unless he was one of those types that wouldn't stop until he saw every one of them dead. That… could pose a problem.

"…good news is that Malefideism is still spreading world-wide. Parents marginally, but we're seeing more membership among the pedophile and child assaulters." Grant summarized. "Retrieval of new agents is going to have to be handled with utmost care. As recent events have shown us, even the best laid plans fall apart when physics-denying freaks come into the equation."

Barry suppressed a groan. It was bad enough a sign that R.A.W. had deemed his failure a thing beyond his control- though he appreciated the lack of a painful death.

At the beginning, he had expected to be laughed out the room, if not beaten within an inch of his life, when he suggested his desperate plan of nuking Newden. Yet lo and behold, the higher ups had decided the situation was desperate enough to warrant throwing subtlety out the window and launching an op to irradiate Newden for the better part of the next few decades.

He now sympathized with every cartoon villain whose meticulous plans were undone by some freak accident. He wanted to wail as they had, cursing the unlucky stars that deemed them a loser once again, calling physics on their bullshit, blatantly cheating a hard-working sociopath out of their moment of triumph.

 _And then it struck him that, in fact, that might be exactly what was happening._

Malefides was R.A.W. personified, a manifestation of sadism, deceit, and ego that Barry had come to grant a sort of grudging respect. That, and the fact Jason Fox's barrage had only seemed to mildly annoy him.

He hadn't spoken it aloud, for fear that Malefides might flat out confirm it, and wreak havoc with the religious zealots who interpreted their religious texts as manuals on how to torture children…

He'd been told, in those mind-breaking boring Sunday school lessons, that the anti-Christ, the bad-guy of all bad-guys, was coming soon.

He just never expected to have coffee with him.

"Neoidentified, I don't suppose you have any genius plans as to how to fix this predicament?" Grant asked sarcastically.

Barry drew in a breath, prepared to say "No, sir"…

…and then Malefides met his eyes with a gimlet glare…

There was a pop in the back of his mind, a sudden rush of inspiration…

"Nothing we do at this moment is going to gain us any amount of effective sympathy among those who aren't already ripe for induction. The fall of Facility #22 means that the media has more martyrs to mourn, and that the six people responsible for the first Facility destruction are going to be viewed as prophets, saints, or worse." Barry thinned his lips grimly. "We're frankly lucky Calvin hasn't seemed to have come public with his ability to distort causality, otherwise we'd be looking at a new religion."

There were grimaces around the table. The knowledge kept flowing, and he doubted he could stop talking even if he wanted to…

"As of now, we don't fully understand how his powers work, or what, if any his vulnerabilities are. If we are ever to mount an effective defense or offense against him, we must, as we have before with many metahumans, determine how his powers work, and if he may be deprived of them. The good news is that as of late…" and he shifted uncomfortably, here… "…our recent activities have been very out in the open. Nuclear attack, an armed assault on Jason Fox's home, a facility dedicated to torture. Our track record with the mentality of the people at large is that we are not expected to be subtle."

"You mean that we should just wait and watch?" Malefides asked incredulously, but it was as if he knew the question had to be asked, and he was prompting him, prodding him to head off concerns…

Paying the feeling no mind, he continued. "No. I doubt he's dumb enough to reveal more of his hand than he absolutely has to. The bad news is, not everyone who subscribes to Malefideism is fit to be a R.A.W. agent. The good news is, they can serve us in conducting a battery of tests."

"Ladies, gentlemen, everyone has breaking points. Joints that can be broken. Nerve clusters that can be used to cripple. Organs that, when ruptured, mean crippling or death. As we all know, three or four of these breaking points is usually enough to break one of our training dummies." Barry smiled as the plan flowed into place, placidly accepting Malefides approving nod and smile. "I say we learn Calvin's… and then strike them all at once."

…

 **MAY**

Summer.

What a joke.

 _What a fucking joke._

Reports were spreading about Malefideism continuing to spread across the country in small clusters, groups of child haters and abusive parents coming together to worship Highweller and Malefides as saints of a new world order.

The Marines had captured a R.A.W. facility, rescuing hundreds of children, but confirming hundreds more had died horrifically. He had been able to watch a fourth of the video before he was forced to click it off, and, with as much dignity as he could muster, drag himself to the toilet to sob and throw up.

Hobbes had held him in his bed until he managed to sleep, but even the embrace of a massive, warm feline did little to soothe him.

There were still children out there, imprisoned in these death factories.

Being tortured, being told no one loved them, and killed when they couldn't feel any more pain…

…and yet the Malefidiots spread, looking at a tape that an atheist could use as cold evidence there was no loving god, and saying "No, you got it all wrong. It's the R.A.W. members who are the victims!"

After reading ten or so posts cheering on the "righteous warriors of R.A.W." or Malefidiots who had gone out and assaulted kids- one nightmarish report a gang of child-haters had barged into a fast-food restaurant and… _deep-fried_ a 5 year old boy to death, then danced and sang in celebration until the cops arrived-

His method for dealing with any Malefideism advocate became simple- kill them.

If R.A.W. and Malefides were going to paint him as some sort of demonic hellspawn, then God help him, he would play the role well.

But that…

…that was not now.

Now he travelled to Verdant Junior High for the graduation ceremony.

Around his arm he wore a green armband, as would be every other student. Tribute to the fallen.

He didn't want to go. The people deserved to mourn their lost loved ones in peace, they didn't need a celebrity hogging the spotlight, especially one that didn't have the answers they needed…

But today was a day of solidarity, for them.

And he would not hide in the shadows.

The auditorium was set up like some sort of funeral service- candles illuminated photos of the deceased, showing smiling faces of students, teachers hard at work…

 _ **Gone.**_

This would be it, he decided. When, later down the road, the world looked at the smoldering pile of Malefidiots and R.A.W. agents, if they had the gall to ask _why…_

This is what he'd point to.

Principal Robert Spittle took the stage. He looked old, far older than he had at the beginning of the school year. There was no grumpy grimace, no piercing stare, just the weight of everything and anything crashing down on him with all the pressure of a cold and uncaring ocean.

"…I want to tell you all that you have bright, shining futures. That you're going into a brand-new world, and your education will take you to new wonders." Spittle said softly into the hush of the auditorium. "I want to tell you that if you just persevere, you will make it in this world. I want to tell you…"

He choked.

The man Calvin knew to be made of iron _choked._

Spittle shook, elderly body convulsing with sorrow, then he found his iron, and took a breath. "I… want to tell you… everything will be okay."

A pause, that could have been seconds or an eternity.

"But I can't." Spittle said sadly.

"Many times, when asked how the world has supposedly changed, it has been said "nothing's changed. You've just been forced to pay attention." This is not the case here. The world has changed. The rules of the game have changed. There are _monsters_ out there, unworthy of being called men and women, who care not one iota if you have been obedient or not."

Spittle drank shakily from a glass of water. "19 students and teachers were taken from us in an act of pointless, petty spite, the masterpiece of a man the likes of which fortunately befoul our world only so very often. They were artists, intellectuals, educators. People with hopes and dreams, killed solely because weak-minded monsters decided that shooting them was okay, because a loud-mouthed monster said so."

"Poison, in the form of a manual on torture, has been spread through our nation, encouraging monsters and those on the verge of becoming such to acts of such viciousness and wanton evil I cannot mention them here. This horrific book of evil acts was written, as many of you now know, by a man who led an armed assault on a friend of our very own Calvin Halgins, for having the audacity to defend himself against madmen time and again."

"Very recently, our city was threatened with absolute annihilation, the desperate actions of an entire organization of monsters whose depravity and cruelty has no bottom limit. There is no point in trying to avoid the issue; to do so is to engage in fatal self-delusion."

Spittle looked out on them all, lip quavering.

"I can offer no advice against these horrors. Nothing I have learned or seen in my years has given me any wisdom applicable to an enemy this savage and determined to destroy all that is good."

"All I can say… all I can ask… is that you please, **please…** be very careful."

And it was a sad, final pleading, the kind of begging made from a man of iron who was at his breaking point, that came from Spittle. Too many funerals. Too many grief-stricken parents, begging to have old papers, art projects, anything they could have to cling to memories of dead children. Having to interview new applicants for positions caked in blood.

One day, Calvin vowed, it would end.

He would drag the head or the heads of R.A.W. into the streets of Newden, cameras watching, execute them one by one, and proclaim that _THEY ARE DEAD._

No more sadists torturing children.

No more monsters writing Satan's parenting guide.

No more dead teachers. No more dead students.

…

Malefides slept fitfully.

The power to warp matter, ignore pain and death, to read minds from miles away, and yet all the might of hell could not produce an opiate strong enough to get him sleep.

The voice of his old god has not left his dreams, when he does sleep. It's still there.

But now…

Where there was disappointment, sadness, and regret…

There was now WRATH.

Unmistakably, with no room for misinterpretation, Malefides knew that there was indeed a Guy in The Sky, and He out and out hated him.

 _ **I will break you. I will crush you. I will make you suffer a thousand times what you have brought on my little ones. I will scourge you without mercy until you forget what not being in agony is like.**_

Children in cells, when he ventured near them, whimpered about pain, hunger, all the things R.A.W. used to destroy them, mind, body, and soul… but occasionally they'd whine about the dark.

 _What a joke,_ Malefides says as he mind-nudges the quartermaster into giving him military grade sleep-aids and the strongest coffee he can provide.

 _People who're afraid of the dark have never seen what the light can do._

He made his way to the conference room, as per the sudden mandate to join for an emergency meeting.

"Now what?" he asked brusquely. It had been one catastrophe after another, and the demonic power that filled him churned with frustration. There was an upper limit to how many complications could occur in the long term plan before even all the power of Hell was unable to rectify the situation.

"We've received word of a development. Not metahuman, at least, not yet." Barry explained. "Apparently, you're still gaining followers."

He glanced at the dossiers on the table. Apparently, _Get With The Program_ was still in demand.

Weak-minded parents seduced by the idea of total obedience, child-haters who wanted new tips for ruining children's lives, those who had no children of their own but wanted to "correct" the parenting "mistakes" of others…

A mother and father allying with a school faculty to frame their own son for rape for the purpose of what amounted to a public service announcement. A grandmother rallying others to attack her granddaughter while she was home alone, take nude photos of her, and then get her arrested for sexting. Judges taking up Highweller's mantle. A girl publicly humiliated by her parents and a principal for sport…

This _was_ good news.

…

They came from all walks of life. Poor, middle class, rich, intellectual, slacker, artist…

Nearly all of them had one thing in common: One way or another, those who treated _Get With The Program!_ as a new bible- Malefidians- had made their lives unbearable through campaigns of lies, assault, or both.

The common goal, spread in secret by word of mouth and on tight-security websites, was not a protest. If people viewed it as such, that was a happy coincidence.

The main reason, for those who had been selected for "External Parenting" or had parents dim enough to believe the lies, was escape.

This marked the event that would be come to known as the "New Exodus".


	2. Forgiveness or Insanity

Tiger Chronicles: Exodus

Chapter I: Forgiveness or Insanity

…

DISCLAIMER: It's been several years since I've started doing this, and Bill Watterson still hasn't signed over the rights to me or sent me a cease and desist. Anyway, I don't own any comic strips and don't claim to.

DISCLAIMER 2/WORD OF GAWD: Calvin himself doesn't fully understand how the gun works.

…

" _A question has been asked of me by many Concerned Elders, who in their humility and good stewardship are concerned about the quality of job they are doing in purging the plague of latent disobedience festering in our world's children."_

" _They ask, 'Mr. Malefides, if a child should expire during external parenting methods, or if the Concerned Elders should deem the child beyond salvage, are such expirations failures on the part of the responsible Concerned Elders?'"_

" _No. Sad as it may be, we are waging a war against children who are determined to be disobedient from the day they are born. The old analogy about omelets and eggs applies here. Not every child can be saved. Not every child should be saved."_

" _That boy you heard about being turned extra-crispy would have fried at best 20 years later in the electric chair. What did he do to make the Concerned Elders decide he needed to die so painfully?"_

" _It doesn't matter."_

" _Innocent, guilty, mostly good, mostly bad, it's all meaningless details. Without examples like these, the children will forget that they are being watched, weighed, measured, and that falling short of any one Concerned Elder's standards means severe consequences."_

" _It doesn't matter why to me, it shouldn't matter why to you, and it didn't matter why to the boy's father, a police officer who responded to the scene and saw fit to kill each and every one of the Concerned Elders, even the Celebrants whose only job was to perform the enlightenment dance."_

" _So, in closing, let me summarize. When going out on a Purge and your group locates a child they deem in need of External Parenting- which in all fairness will probably be the first child you see- it will likely be not a question of 'should we terminate this child', but rather 'why shouldn't we'."_

…

Pastor Victor had seen plenty of bad cases in his time as a minister.

People who life had dealt a hand so horrible, so unfair, that he couldn't really blame them for thinking that God hated them and wanted them to suffer. Counseling helped. Reaching out to them through the church helped. Faith sometimes helped.

He had dealt with cases where parents had punished children wrongly, and the kid was ticked off. Talking about forgiveness and how the parents had forgiven past mistakes helped a little, working on a plan of restitution within reason helped.

It was obvious Kyle didn't want to be here, surrounded by his parents, Mr. Mallory, a member of the church who had struck Kyle multiple times over six years for his alleged theft, two teachers from his school who had punished him and encouraged other teachers to do so as he progressed, and Mrs. Jennings, an elderly woman who…

…well, he had to face facts. Mrs. Jennings was a gossiper, a rumor-starter, someone who never took no for an answer, a holier-than-thou, and to Kyle, who had been dragooned into doing work around her house as punishment and now therapy, she had been a cruel slave driver.

"Kyle, we know you're not happy with the therapy program we've laid out, and we understand you're still very angry about what happened. What do you want to come out of this?" he asked kindly.

"I want everyone in this room to die." He snapped.

 _Yeah, we aren't going to get to hugs and 'I love you's' for a while._

"Yourself included?" Victor said softly after a few moments.

" **Especially** me. You can't hurt me if I'm dead." He snarled.

"You don't mean that." Said a horrified Jenna Blake, a blonde who was his current math teacher; she had given him zeros for every homework assignment due to the accusation. "You can't possibly mean-"

"Well, what the **fuck** would you know, bitch?!" Kyle lashed out. "You didn't listen the first ten times about how I didn't do it, what the hell gives you the right to decide what the fuck I mean and don't mean?"

"Kyle, please, let's be civil-" his father began…

"NO, FUCK BEING CIVIL, YOU LET HIM…" and he jabbed a finger at Mr. Mallory, who seemed to fold into himself "BEAT ME BLOODY FOR SIX YEARS AND LET HER" he jabbed a finger at Mrs. Jennings, smiling at his rage and anguish "FUCKING WHIP ME WHILE I MOW HER LAWN?" he screamed, shaking with rage.

"That reminds me, **Thief,** I need my hedges done this time." Mrs. Jennings said, voice dripping with satisfaction at her jab.

Victor shot Jennings a glare. "You're not helping."

She reacted with a sulking look fit for a scolded child, but Victor had to face facts- the damage done to Kyle had been immense. It had gone past abuse and into something that rivaled the new _Blockhead_ film in terms of focused maliciousness. Yet, if everyone in the church and most of the people in his schools weren't to be hauled off to prison, they would have to further deny him joy and clamp down on him until he ceased to show any desire for retaliation of any kind.

He was well aware of how such a method would be looked upon if word got out- no doubt they'd accuse everyone involved of Malefideism, born of another pastor leading a church into a campaign of child abuse.

"Kyle, you have to understand," his mother said pleadingly. "Jesus went through-"

"Yes, yes, Jesus was flogged, nailed to a tree, died, and **THEN HE CAME BACK, BECAUSE HE'S GOD.** I'm not. You have been letting those two _assholes-_ " he gestured at Mallory and Jennings- "-beat on me for six years because **this** asshole-" and he gestured at Victor "-couldn't be bothered to look under the podium for the envelope, and YOU two assholes punished me, day after day after day this whole goddamn time."

"Kyle, don't take the Lord's name in vain-" Victor began, and immediately realized that wasn't going to have the intended effect…

"Oh, I'm sorry. After six fucking years of being called thief-"

"You are a thief." Jennings interrupted with a sickly smile. "And a little bitch."

Kyle stood up.

"Honey, wait, you have to forgive as Jesus forgave…"

"Would you rather me call you Bitch?" Jennings chuckled. "You cried like one after I got you with the weedeater-"

The door to Victor's office slammed against the wall as Kyle made his violent exit, and Victor pursued.

If, on judgement day, Kyle was not among the number to ascend to paradise, Victor knew that it would be due to his actions. He was not looking forward to explaining to the author of creation how he had used a message of mercy and love to demonize a six year old, turning him from an innocent child to a jaded, angry nihilist who preferred death to life.

"I'll try to calm him down." He sighed as he took off running.

In college, he had been on debate, and his experiences granted him enough insight to know that the idiocy of the argument he was trying to make- that six years of intensifying punishment and degradation could be amended by comparatively instantaneous forgiveness and continued service to someone who had out and out abused him, repeatedly and unrepentantly.

If you stated something and you didn't have facts to back it up, if all you had was hearsay and opinions and your opponent had facts and expert testimony, you had already lost. His argument was that God and his people were about love and forgiveness, and he had a bible as evidence. Kyle's argument was that everyone in his life was beyond redemption, and he had six years of unrelenting abuse and a body-map of scars as proof.

Still he pursued.

If Kyle found a lawyer willing to do a pro bono, that was it. Mallory and Jennings would not survive prison. The church would take a hit financially at the very least. Kyle's parents would probably do jail time.

Making him do more sacrifices might break him, he was aware of that. Mrs. Jennings would not stop. The stigma would only die out gradually. The isolation to prevent him from ratting them out would be devastating. Mr. Mallory would get off scot-free, and that would only serve to anger Kyle further.

One life versus hundreds.

He kept running.

…

Kyle stormed out of the church, Pastor Victor hot on his heels. Years of beatings and abuse had taken their toll; his top speed was a brisk walk.

"Kyle, Kyle wait! WAIT!"

He tried to move faster, into a neighborhood he didn't know, didn't care he didn't know…

"Kyle, wait, I don't think you understand, God is calling you to perform a miracle-"

He turned around, unable to ignore this bullshit.

"This? This is God calling me to perform a miracle? Of what, forgiveness? Forgiveness isn't a miracle, it doesn't exist!"

Victor, exasperated, shook his head. "Of _course_ it exists, you're just…"

"If it exists, if your mission is to get me to _forgive…_ " and he let the sarcastic inflection fall on that last word, that word he had grown to despise, "…then why the hell couldn't you or the church forgive me for something I **didn't do?!** "

"Kyle, this is a test-"

"NO! IT'S NOT A FUCKING TEST!" he screamed, making Victor wince. _Good._ _Now he knows how it feels._

"I know Mrs. Jennings said I did it! I know you never found any money in my room, or when dad pulled me into the bathroom and fucking strip searched me, force fed me prune juice and watch me take a shit, slapped me and **beat me with a belt when I cried and told him I never took anything!** You told everyone I did it! EVERYONE! My teachers! My friends! People who I would have never met traveled to my home just to tell me what a horrible kid I was! You all laughed when Mr. Mallory kicked me in the balls when I was eight! EIGHT! YOU KNEW I DIDN'T DO IT, DIDN'T YOU?! **YOU ALL JUST THOUGHT IT WAS FUNNY TO HURT ME!** "

Victor was horrorstruck at the insinuation. "No… no, Kyle, if we had known-"

"You. Knew." Kyle snarled.

"No, you have to believe me, if I had any idea you didn't-"

"YOU KNEW!" he screamed, uncaring that his outburst was drawing a crowd. " **YOU KNEW THAT I DIDN'T DO IT, AND YOU LIED ABOUT ME STEALING ANYWAY!** "

Victor staggered, finally thrown for a loop, confronted with the truth he had denied for so long. His mother, father, and teachers caught up, from the looks on their faces they'd overheard the gist of it…

"You all knew I didn't steal any money! You all knew I never even touched it! But you kept punishing me, over and over AND OVER AND OVER **AND OVER AND OVER FOR SIX YEARS!** "

People came out of their houses now to hear Kyle's tirade. This was going bad to worse…

Then Kyle dropped the bomb, turning to one of the bystanders.

"I need to use your phone to call the police."

The person in question, a man in his fifties, blinked. "Wha-"

"These people abused me. They let a man beat me repeatedly and tortured me. I need your phone to call the police." Kyle repeated.

 _ **WHAM.**_

Kyle last's thoughts before meeting the concrete face first were that he really, _really_ should have seen this coming…

…

Victor stared down at the unconscious form of Kyle Creekson, the twelve year old boy he had just knocked unconscious with a right hook.

He didn't _mean_ to hurt him. He just needed him to shut up before he hurt a lot of people in ways that could never heal.

But as he looked around at the oncoming swarm of angry bystanders, livid at his actions, he realized that what he meant to do didn't mean anything, here.

Kyle had given the argument: _These people abused me._

His old debate teacher had warned against actions that were akin to 'fighting fire with fire'- reactions that only served to prove the other side's point. If accused of basing arguments on ad hominem attacks, you didn't counter with allegations the opposition was taking bribes from child slavery traffickers. If accused of being unable to accept criticism, you didn't storm off in a fit…

…and if accused of being abusive, you did not punch out your accuser.

 _Touche, Kyle._

…

She had used the restroom, read her copy of "Get with the Program" again, and still no sign of the Bitch or the others.

Mrs. Jennings sulked.

There were lawns to be mowed, toilets to be scrubbed, cups of scalding coffee to be thrown in the Bitch's face… what was taking them so long?

She went back to reading.

It was entertaining, this guide. Nothing she didn't know already, mind, but it was a nice validation nonetheless.

She frowned as she read the chapter on this… _Calvin._ Horrible, wretched thing. The news said he had killed people- _dozens_ of people. There had been some talk of terrorists and child abuse that she had blocked out; the only relevant thing was that a child capable of murder was on the loose.

She pursed her lips as she recalled Kyle's outburst a few days ago. The church finding out her accusation was unfounded was inevitable- she couldn't take the money for fear of being found out, and truth be told she was surprised she had as long as she did to have her fun. Kyle's burst of rage, however, meant that he had not been wholly broken.

If she was going to get him to reject God so that she could damn him to hell, that could be a problem. It could work to her advantage if he was bitter enough to develop maltheism…

So far, the other members of the church merely thought her mean-spirited, not dedicated to damning others. Otherwise, they'd have hurled her out on her ass long ago.

It had been an hour and a half. She bet her last nickel the Bitch was hoping to stall long enough so she'd get bored and leave. As if she would abandon her latest project to chance.

Susie Derkins. Simon Highweller. His show going off the air had been a tragedy for her, and reading the gory details only helped her get a sense of perspective. A well-meaning judge testing a student's resolve, only to be demonized and jailed for asking if the girl was sincere. At least the book had the decency to eschew all that nonsense about bombings and school shootings.

Jennings glanced at the clock…

Two and a half hours. She blinked.

In a mind that normally served only to function as a factory of cruelty and malice, a sudden spark of worry flared into existence.

Why had they been gone that long? The Bitch was one boy with a limp. He couldn't have gotten far.

The only reason that they would be taking so much time was if he had gotten himself killed, or someone had intervened…

That would mean that he would tell them about what he'd been through. Who had hurt him. And with what…

Some dark inspiration told Jennings she needed to be home an hour ago, making incriminating things such as weed-eaters and canes disappear.

Panic started to build in her, her heart pounding as she scampered to her car. For six years, she had taken the notion that The Bitch's punishments would go unreported, unheeded. That could change if he was allowed to speak to someone not in the loop.

Jennings burned rubber.

Horns blared, cars swerved, a mother yanked her stroller back with an attosecond to spare… _why were all these idiots in her way?_

She made a hard turn through a red light, ignoring screeching brakes and screams of fury. There was no time to play the games the normal people played, with all their insipid rules… she forced herself to breathe normally. She'd been in the clear for six years, this wasn't going to change just because of some stupid little boy…

A boy hauled himself and his bike out of her path. An indignant jogger, observing the near miss, shouted obscenities.

They didn't exist, right now. All that mattered was Laura Jennings and her house full of incriminating things that she needed to get rid of _right now._

She screeched to a halt in front of her garage. No one to intrude on her, no police.

 _Yet._

She made a mental list of things she had used to assault The Bitch- the cane. The weed-eater. The knives. They would all have to go, but she would recover from this, she would disavow everything, move, it was going to be _okay-_

Then she heard the car pull up behind her in her driveway, heard the radio chatter.

"Laura Jennings, you are under arrest…"

 _No,_ she realized with a stark finality as her arms were cuffed behind her back.

 _No, it would not be okay._

…

Curtis had access to a laptop in what seemed like forever after his first mission, and used what time he could to distract himself from memories of his first mission.

 _Jesus, help them all._

It was not an oath. It was a short, desperate prayer. His superiors had believed that sending him on a mission to infiltrate a R.A.W. compound would be a suitable assessment of his skills in live combat, and partially catharsis.

But there was nothing cathartic about hauling out the dead bodies of little children, victims of an organization… God _almighty,_ how fucked up did the world have to be, to have a massive organization dedicated to torturing children?

He had made every single member, from soldier to the lowliest janitor, pay dearly when they crossed his path. He had made no exemptions for gender, color, anything. According to the medics, that one technician would never walk right again. That was assuming her involvement didn't get her the death penalty.

 _Boo. Hoo._

No one was feeling sympathy for these fuckers. Not when the crazy red-and-black bastard had stopped his Michael Jackson impression to torture a torturer to death, screaming in pure rage as he did so, making a very clear threat to whoever was watching via cameras that it was on.

What little he knew of "Deadpool" was that he was a mercenary and a wack-job. He might have been paid for the job, he might have done it for kicks.

Deadpool had killed bastards, provided him with some excellent ideas to use on Barry when he got a hold of him, and carried out kids without making a single joke. That made him alright in Curtis' book.

Idly he remembered the others from his first encounter with R.A.W.

The woman and the girl, victims for speaking out. Two blonde boys, one with glasses, one with spike-hair. Himself and Chutney.

He did a search for Jason, the glasses boy, then for Calvin, the crazy spike haired one…

 _Oh, fuck._

Jason had been attacked several times, resulting in the… death of his assailants. Once by a group of concerned elders- domestic terrorist wannabes. Then again by an assassin. Then by an army.

All of whom were dead.

Videos of the "Good Friday War" were available. Whatever sympathy he might have had for the attackers vaporized, when, for no other apparent reason than for carnage's sake, children were dragged out of several homes and beaten to death in the streets.

Shortly after a man in a suit had shouted at Jason, there came a barrage of firebombs, gatling gun fire, ( _what?)_ mustard gas, (What?!) acid, exploding arrows…

The barrage destroyed any offensive the attackers could make, until the same man in the suit advanced… throwing cars.

 _Okay, what the fuck is going on?!_

They peppered him with acid, explosives, gatling fire, but his skin and clothes repaired themselves and he advanced, unstoppable… only to be thrown back twice, the second time resulting in him crawling away.

He knew enough to understand that if there was an explanation for how the fuck someone could survive that, he wasn't cleared to know it. More impressive was that Jason Fox, someone he believed would die in Marine training, could mount that spectacular and effective a defense.

He would have all sorts of questions for him if he got a chance to talk. Maybe Calvin had a more uneventful time of things…

After thirty minutes of reading, Curtis decided on his first question to Calvin:

 _How the fuck are you alive?_

…

" _I've gotten a lot of emails. Most are pretty polite and professional, but I still get the occasional asshole."_

" _Mr. George Knouter, a self-proclaimed fan of Samuel Highweller's now defunct courtroom show, said in so many words that I deserved to be executed- in very graphic detail, might I add- for what I did to Highweller."_

" _Mr. and Mrs. Duncan say I'm a bad influence to children and teenagers, and I should be locked up for the horrible things I've done. Pardon me, Mr. and Mrs Duncan, for not adhering to the advice of someone who tried to frame their son for the rape of a teacher, all in the name of a 'public service announcement'."_

" _People… my actions were the result of either getting attacked or someone else being attacked by grown men and women who wanted to hurt and kill children and teens because it made them feel good. So for your own sakes, consider whose side you want to be seen as being on before you send me a death threat describing how you'd torture me to death."_

" _Oh, and on a more pragmatic angle, look at my track record for dealing with people who tried that. Go ahead. I'll wait."_

-Recent Entry on Calvin's Blog

…

April stuffed things into a backpack in a frenzy, not really caring for fashion.

"Honey, you're taking this **way** too personally." Her father said for the tenth…

…twentieth?...

…hundredth?…

It didn't matter. Hollow words.

Humiliated in front of the school by her principal. With her parents holding her down so he could strip her…

…and they had **no idea.**

She looked back at him after she finished getting her clothes, searching his face for some indication that he knew he'd messed up big time…

Nothing.

If John Patterson knew that there was something seriously wrong with forcing her daughter onto a stage so a principal could strip her to her underwear and force her into a gunge tank, he wasn't showing it. The voices of disgust and rage from the students and teachers gathered for the event- a post school year party- had only confused him and his wife.

Her mother-only-in-name.

They had thrust her into the hands of a pedophile, and they didn't see anything wrong with it.

Elly Patterson had always been 'out of touch' to put it kindly, 'batshit insane' to put it more accurately, incapable of seeing past her nose. She probably did think it was completely appropriate behavior.

She probably thought that despite the "God kill me now and I will sing your praises forever in heaven" embarrassment, she could just shrug, say "it's just a joke, now stop being so dramatic", and that would be it.

"April, look, he was just joking around, and it got out of hand-"

She'd heard this story before. She wasn't going to hear it again, and pushed past him, **shoved** her mother aside when she tried to hug her…

"Honey you're overreacting…"

Hate you.

"…can't take everything so personally, it's not…"

Never want to see you again.

"…you don't mean that, you need to laugh it off and apologize to Mr. Dregs…"

 _You're both fucking insane._

A friend was waiting outside in a car for her. Everything seemed so hazy, she couldn't even tell whether she was thinking or saying things, but she was coherent enough to know the person in the car was a friend, or at the very least not the two people who had betrayed her…

Somewhere, in the back of April's mind, she knew going to a friend's house after her life was ruined wasn't going to fix anything in the long term. But there was no way in hell she was going to sleep under the same roof as **them.**

…

The rain came down in torrential sheets, soaking the grass into a muddy carpet of green and brown. Lightning flashed across the sky with ear-splitting peals of thunder, briefly illuminating the seemingly endless expanse of damp green.

Susie laughed and ran faster, clad in red swim shorts and a blue shirt.

Calvin pursued, chasing her playfully, wearing the black pants and red striped shirt of his youth.

Both were barefoot, which made the terrain treacherous to run on, but he knew, somehow…

They were safe.

The lightning blazed across the sky in jagged, iridescent cracks, the rain soaked them through and through, but Calvin knew, as he gave chase, that they were in no danger.

Her feet kicked up small splashes of muddy water as he dashed after her…

 _Why?_

Why not?

He wasn't angry, she wasn't angry, she was laughing…

Finally he caught her, picking her up off the ground, and she squealed for joy…

Her hair was soaked, and she was out of breath, but she was… happy.

Safe.

Happy and safe with him.

"I don't want to lose you." she says softly.

"You won't." he promises.

"Could we stay? Do we have to go back?"

There were three cracks of thunder that sounded suspiciously like knocks…

And suddenly, he was awake, holding a pillow.

Gone was the rainy field, the soaked Susie Derkins, the thunderstorm that baptized them both. The weather was a hot sunny day, and as he sat up, he was ready to dismiss it all as a simple dream…

…and yet he couldn't shake the feeling of an incredible loss.

…

" _You want to know why Malefides keeps getting followers?"_

" _Because he tells them what they want to hear. Not what they need to hear, not what they deserve to hear, but what they want to hear, nothing more, nothing less."_

" _I've heard of people trying to win Malefidians over with logic and reasoning, let me just say right now: You're wasting your time. If these assholes- and no, don't bleep that out, that's what they are- had any logic in them, they wouldn't be taking advice from a torture manual."_

" _Malefides tells the child abusers their children are provoking them deliberately. He calls forced waste retention- also known as not letting kids use the bathroom- discipline building behavior. He calls a group of men raping a little girl a "lesson in humility and obedience". Whatever they want to hear, that's what he'll preach."_

" _Then these people go out and screw up innocent people's lives, dance around in bathrobes, and they are genuinely shocked when they're shot at or arrested."_

" _It attracts idiots, and it attracts people with phds. It attracts people from all walks of life, who all have several things in common- they cannot stand to be called 'wrong', they have little or no empathy, and for whatever reason, they have a burning hatred for anyone below an arbitrary age limit."_

" _You think I'm complaining about what I go through? To hell with me. I'm fine. These people come after me and they die. You want to know who suffers? Who deserves a lot of people getting really angry on their behalf?"_

" _People like Jessica Mavin, who still get death threats from people she's never met, three times her age at least, all because six walking cancers assaulted her. Assholes come from across the country just to throw rocks at her as she gets out of school because they're offended at her having the audacity to say what happened to her was wrong."_

" _People like Officer Greths, whose wife was killed and son was deep-fried by a bunch of "Concerned Elders" who barged into a restaurant and started killing kids because they were bored."_

" _People like the Fox family, who, regardless of apparently being armed to the teeth, didn't deserve to have a bunch of idiots descend on their house with intent to kill."_

" _People like Ashley Banker, a twelve-year old girl whose asshole of a neighbor helped R.A.W. members abduct her and haul her off to a now-defunct torture camp. Bianca Tate claims she did it because she felt Ashley didn't have enough adversity in her life. Ashley is now blind, deaf, paraplegic and needs several prescription tranquilizers to help her sleep at night. Tate still claims she did the right thing."_

" _Hell, you want someone more current to pity? The kids of these idiot parents who can't even blame their actions on a book who think helping frame their son for a rape that never happened or stripping and humiliating their daughter is all good fun. God, I hope they are idiots. The idea of someone logically deciding to become a Malefidian is beyond me."_

" _These people didn't ask for the scum of the world to come barging into their lives, rip everything apart, and do everything in their power to salt the earth."_

" _One final note here: One reason the police get from Concerned Elders- the ones they arrest and don't shoot on sight- about_ _ **why**_ _they go out and commit these atrocities is that they don't get the respect they deserve from children. They are violently and deeply offended when everyone under 18 doesn't stop and touch the ground with their forehead in obeisance when these "wise and wonderful" adults fart in their direction."_

" _To paraphrase Charlie Brown, one of the few filmmakers that doesn't make me nauseous- we'd show you the respect you deserve, but you're too big to flush."_

-Interview with Calvin Halgins

…

"…sorry, what?" Susie asked again, blinking.

"Suppose you had the power to change the world." Calvin repeated, not looking at her, looking down at the grass… or looking through it. "Like these… metahumans or mutants we keep hearing about."

They were eating lunch together under a tree by a river near the woods, one of the few remaining places not bulldozed and developed into a mini-mall or suburb.

"…change the world how?" she asked. The conversation between them during their get-together had been friendly and relaxed, with both parties occasionally making a double entendre, but this threw her for a loop, somehow.

"…like… oh, I don't know. You got the power to… change things. Like, _physically_ change them. But only if…" he paused. "…only if people believed you could do it."

She raised an eyebrow. "…a faith based superpower? That sounds like one of those insipid Christian action cartoons they made me watch in Sunday school."

"Well, it doesn't have to be exactly that. Anything on that scale." Calvin clarified.

Unsure where he was going with this, Susie thought. "…in other words, power approaching a god."

There was an uncomfortable silence. Calvin looked…

…guilty?

…afraid?

…worried?

"…yeah."

"Well," she said, shrugging as she sipped lemonade. "it would depend on who gave it to me. I mean, if someone in a black suit came up to me with a contract they wanted signed in blood, I'd say no." she said jokingly. "…and if the power meant I'd have to fight God, I'd pass. I've it on good authority that doesn't end well." She looked at Calvin, chewing his sandwich. "Why do you ask?"

"Just… thinking." He said after he swallowed. "I mean, I used to think having 'super powers' would be awesome. But now with everything that's going on, just being _known_ seems trouble enough."

Susie nodded solemnly. "I… I just wanted to make the issue known, you know? Make people aware that people were homeless in their own city." She looked at the creek, a bird bathing itself by the shore. "…of course, if I had superpowers like you said, Highweller wouldn't have been a problem." She said sadly.

"Hey," Calvin said suddenly. "Highweller wasn't your fault. Don't ever tell yourself that. People like him… people like him are scum. They don't care about anything but their own ego."

He reached out to touch her, and she leaned in. It felt nice, warm, relaxing.

She wasn't an idiot. There were still monsters out there. The Destroyer that haunted her dreams was real. But she would take her respites where she could get them.

"There is one thing I'd do if I had superpowers." She offered causally.

"Oh?" Calvin said, drinking some lemonade.

"I'd peek on you in the shower."

She doubled over in laughter as Calvin fought to get the lemonade out of his nose.

Life…

Life was difficult, but it had it

s good moments, and one of those was watching her boyfriend blush and try to get lemonade out of his nose while looking dignified.

She'd ask him later about what he thought about the dream she had about the rainy field.

…

The days where Jason Fox had energy to devote to childish girl-bashing were long behind him, so when Eileen Jacobson knocked on the hotel room door, he was less irritated and more concerned.

Eileen had, among other students, contacted him after word of the 'Good Friday War', to make sure he was still alive, but he hadn't expected her to visit in person.

He stepped outside to talk in private. "Hey, what's up-"

"An's run away."

For a moment, weary processors in his brain ran to figure out the enormity of what that meant.

"An? An Xiao? As in, daughter of the cocksucker?" he asked.

"Cocksucker and abuser." Eileen said bitterly. "Her dad found out she told the truth about the gun drawing bullshit, and beat her up pretty bad."

Jason made a mental note that he now had a 'volunteer' to test any new weapons on.

"Shit. Any idea where she went?" he asked.

"Have you heard of this 'Exodus' thing?" Eileen asked. Without waiting for Jason's no, she continued. "It's basically a big camp-out for kids who have been hurt by the Malefidiot bullshit. They're saying until their parents or whoever wise up, they're not coming home."

Several dozen possible outcomes of this formed rapidly in Jason's head, none of them good. They could run out of food. They could kill each other. A few armed Malefidiots could find them and go on a killing spree…

"And the cocksucker?" Jason asked.

"He's in lock-up. An's mother is leaving him over this, I hear. Phoebe's tried calling her cell, but she hasn't responded."

"Shit… look, I can sympathize, but… what do you want me to do? I barely know An-"

"But she knows you." Eileen broke in pointedly. "Everyone does. All I'm asking is that you call her and try to talk some sense into her. This… won't end well, Jason."

Then they were on the same page, then.

It should not have come as a surprise that Eileen's intellect could calculate all the ways this "Exodus", a bold, but unplanned gesture, could fail. An wasn't thinking rationally; being assaulted by your own father for telling the truth had that effect.

She held out a scrap of paper with An's number.

"I'll do what I can," said Jason finally. "but you have to understand… if it was as bad as I think it was, An's not going to feel safe here. **We** don't feel safe here. Even appealing to logic, it's going to be a hard sell."

Eileen just nodded sadly.

…

Alone in his sparsely furnished room, Malefides meditated.

Or, at least, it felt like meditating, letting the power of the abyss flow through him, showing him the outside world.

This Exodus lunacy was a welcome diversion.

R.A.W. was one of many facets of the plan. To subscribe to their methodology with the same zeal as so many of their best agents did was folly.

It was time to work the other end.

These were not your typical angsty teenagers who wrote depressing poetry because their parents didn't buy them the right color car- they had legitimate grievances, injuries physical and mental brought about from either parents or 'Concerned Elders' taking the methods his book- the Malefidian's Bible, "Get With The Program"- to heart.

In a way, that made it all the better. For all of them to congregate together, whatever the reason, was an opportunity he could not afford to pass up.

The most damning incidents of late came to his mind. The false accusation of rape, the stripping and humiliation of a girl, a boy punished horrifically for six years, hell, even the woes of Susie Derkins were usable…

The inspiration came to him quickly, as he recalled an axiom spouted repeatedly during Derkins' nightmarish trials… "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished".

The actions of one side provided fuel to convince the other side to follow a certain course of action, which in turn would provide fuel to the first side…

It was a perpetual motion engine of misery.

Precision would be crucial here. To turn a child against oneself, all you needed to do was hit them, lie about them, insult them, and you had a life-long enemy that saw you as an unreasonable tyrant that needed to be escaped or destroyed. To turn them against someone with the same ferocity, even when the target party had been openly and blatantly abusive, required a more delicate touch…

One general message to provide a common sense of distrust, and then more specific nudges for individuals…

He became aware of a messenger outside his door, ready to inform him to report for duty. A brief flash of irritation, then a willing by the darkness within him, and all that expected him to attend another insipid meeting forgot he was ever requested to attend…

…he had so much to do, and never enough time to do it.


	3. Trust No One

Tiger Chronicles: Exodus

Chapter II: Trust No One

…

If you recognize it, I don't own it.

...

Questions were asked after Bruce Victor, pastor of Righteous Light Church, was arrested for assaulting a twelve year old boy in broad daylight. More questions were asked when it was revealed that for six years, Pastor Victor had not only condoned, but _encouraged_ the violent and systematic abuse of Kyle over a crime there was no evidence he had committed.

Among many of the pointed queries was one directed at the youths who attended Righteous Light- _why didn't you say anything?_

And so the tales of Andrew, Shaniqua, and Jesse were brought into the light of day.

Andrew Vales, 10, had been the first to ask, after having seen Mr. Mallory stomp on a downed seven year-old Kyle's hand repeatedly and everyone _laughed,_ what he possibly could have done to deserve that. When he found out he had supposedly stolen a lot of money, he asked if they had ever found that money. When replied to in the negative, he asked "then how do you know he stole it?"

Mrs. Jennings caught wind of this, and suggested to Pastor Vincent and Andrew's family that the boy was rebellious, that he envied Kyle's bad boy reputation, and he ought to be sent somewhere to correct such budding un-Christian behaviors. Namely Grindstone.

Andrew was reported to have committed suicide. "Common occurrence among incorrigible cases." Grindstone had said. "We are truly sorry."

Shaniqua Lance, 8, had watched a nine year-old Kyle bleed through his shirt from badly healing wounds as his teacher tore apart his ten page paper for English, saying that a thief didn't deserve anything but a zero, and, being privy to why everyone hated Kyle, asked if maybe three years of punishment over $153.47 he had never been proven to possess wasn't a little too severe.

Jennings found out, made some calls to her parents, made a few embellishments about her badmouthing her teachers and planning to join a gang, and Shaniqua was shipped off to Grindstone.

Her parents were devastated at her suicide, but Jennings assured them with the old adage that "Good wombs sometimes bear bad sons… and daughters."

Jesse, 12, watched three grown men, including Kyle's own father, beat the then ten year-old boy before the congregation with belts, and done what he felt Jesus would do- he helped him up after they stopped.

Jennings, determined to make sure her fun lasted as long as it could, smashed all her windows, burned her flowerbeds, and then made a frantic call to the police that Jesse had tried to break in, raving about trying to show up Kyle.

Grindstone. Suicide. "We're sorry."

Each of the three incidents reinforced the unspoken but very clear message- question the punishment of Kyle, OR help him in any way, and you died. End of story. There was little mourning outside of the families of the three who had dared to interfere in the quasi-religious ritual of making sure Kyle stayed on that twilight of wanting to die, but never being allowed to do so.

Heuristics, or that answering questions meant more questions were poised, demanded that some reason be given to Mrs. Jennings' dedication to silencing any questioning of Kyle's nightmare. A veteran police officer, acting sympathetic to Mrs. Jennings, managed to glean the reason out of her.

In the end, it was discovered that what had transpired was not a result of revenge, money, envy of youth, or even a devotion to Malefideism.

One child had been tortured for six years and three had been tortured to death, all because Mrs. Jennings was bored.

…

On paper it sounded like a decent idea, Calvin admitted, as he looked at the "New Exodus" website.

Half-protest, half-getaway, it was meant to provide a means for teens affected by Malefideism to get away from what were likely very dangerous situations, and raise awareness that the methods used by Malefidians weren't "strict"- they were lethal.

In reality…

"That's just a massacre waiting to happen." Hobbes said succinctly.

As grim a prediction as it was, Calvin was forced to agree. Malefidians, it had been proven time and time again, did not listen. Their "War Chant" said it all- Kill, Steal, Destroy.

Malefidians had coined a new pseudo-legal term: " _In accusatione satis est.",_ literally "the charge is enough", or that by virtue of having been accused, a minor defendant was guilty of _something._ It was a completely illegal method of doing things, and yet those who felt they were above the law- judges, cops, teachers, complete strangers- cited it as if it were common law, inviolable as the rest of the constitution.

There was talk of declaring Malefideism to be a terrorist organization, but talk was cheap. Until the Malefidiot child rapists and Judge Highweller wannabes were given a reason to be afraid, they would get bolder and more aggressive.

"Any more word from Jason?" Hobbes inquired.

"Still house hunting. Lawsuits and insurance will pay for it, but…" Calvin sighed. "They don't feel safe in Stirwood anymore."

"Well, that's only natural." Hobbes asserted gruffly. "He gets kidnapped and has to kill his way out, gets expelled for defending himself and with phony charges, they send an assassin disguised as a tutor, his home gets attacked and they have to resort to siege warfare, then the S.W.A.T. team shows up late and arrests the kids… it's not exactly a glowing review of Stirwood."

Even Newden was safer. Sure, someone had tried to nuke it, but he had seen to it that had failed miserably with not one innocent casualty, the evacuations had been orderly, order had been restored quickly, and the last incident of Malefidiots trying external parenting- trying to accost a kid at a pizza-slash-arcade restaurant- had ended with five of the "Concerned Elders" in Intensive Care and the sixth soiling himself.

He looked back to the New Exodus site.

"You're going to go there, aren't you?" asked Hobbes.

"Mmm hmm."

"Even though it's a death trap?"

"Yep."

"Even though it'd be a lot safer to just try and get in contact with them via text or email?"

"You know it."

He knew, deep down, Hobbes was just looking out for him, but they'd had this conversation before. The gun begat responsibility, and part of that responsibility was making sure that the people he had started a war with did as little damage as possible… or at least, that was Calvin's position.

"Let me just recap the list of people trying to kill you, right now." Hobbes said crossly. "R.A.W., any leftover Highweller fans, Malefidiots, and from the looks of the video the Fox kid took, Satan himself." He counted the four off on his paw. "So of course you want to go out and thumb your nose at them."

Calvin opened his mouth to respond-

"If you die, it will be a devastating blow to everyone who looks up to you!" Hobbes snarled. "That's why they were willing to nuke Newden- because to them, any expense, any sacrifice is worth killing anyone who is brave enough and strong enough to oppose them!"

"And what if they decide to just kill everyone in this Exodus camp? What then?!" he retorted.

"Then you can react, being aware of them **without** them being aware of you. If you're there, and anyone- R.A.W., Malefidian, what have you- sees you, you're the first priority target. If they don't see you in the initial attack…"

"You make it sound like it's inevitable." Calvin said, not so much irritated as he was concerned.

"If not R.A.W., then Malefidian or yet another happy "we kill kids for fun" group." Hobbes said sadly, looking out the window. It was eight in the evening, but still fairly light out.

"If you don't care about your well-being, let me put it this way: Every time you get dragged into these adventures, your mom and dad age another twenty years mentally. Doesn't matter that you're saving lives- hell, if they knew you were out disarming _nukes…_ "

His parents.

He had completely, utterly neglected to take into account how this must stress them. The truth of what he'd done for Newden during the Good Friday crisis would give them heart attacks. If they survived, he'd never be let outside the house again…

Hobbes' predictions, he knew in his heart and mind, weren't merely attempts to get him out of the line of fire. There **would** be attackers. This many adolescents and teens banding together to get away from Malefidian parenting was the sort of bait the typical Malefidiot would not be able to resist.

Making contact with them was imperative. Every day this camp went on was another that any number of hostiles had to prepare an attack. Malefidiots would just storm the area and kill or torture to death as many as they could. R.A.W. would kill the oldest and capture the youngest for…

…he could not think on that. His therapist had warned him nothing good would come of contemplating the use of the horrible devices he'd seen.

"Okay, okay." He conceded, as Hobbes let out a breath. "We do this smart…"

…

Barry Wilkins **did** have an idea for how to handle this "New Exodus" camp, and it involved napalm in large quantities.

His wiser inclinations made him keep his mouth shut however. A firestorm-induced death, with all the suffocation, rapid burning, and shock it induced would be considered a 'quick kill' by R.A.W., and he had enough experience to know that, barring extreme circumstances, suggesting that was a great way to find out just how painful the breaker's ministrations could be.

"High Father has stated we are to bide our time." Judge Grant noted with no small amount of displeasure. "After the metahumans interfering with the Newden bombing, anything that could be linked to us could have this…" he blinked incredulously at the dossier. "…Superman coming down on our heads, to say nothing of the Newden freak…"

With extreme effort Barry held his expression as close to neutral as he could. He was grateful, immensely grateful, that the interference he encountered was so extraordinary that not even R.A.W.'s ultra-Darwinian mentality could fault him, but all that meant, he had quickly understood, was a stay of execution.

Allegedly, this Superman abided by a strict "no killing" policy. As Barry had learned from watching and doing, there was plenty you could do to someone that made killing a mercy.

That, and his failure, no matter how much of a "God says fuck you" cosmic screw-over it was, pissed him off.

There they were, the five of them, in the White Room they used for planning and execution of the schemes R.A.W. assigned to them. Grant, Landers, Derricks, Gathwells, and himself. Malefides was nowhere to be seen- just as well, they only had five chairs.

He tried not to dwell on the fact that he had proposed what amounted to the ultimate table-flip- using multiple nuclear bombs- to deal with one person, got that insane proposal approved, highlighting the desperation of the matter, had his nightmarish, pants-shitting scary theory proven correct, revealed his trump card, had _**that**_ destroyed as well, and now the thing that could somehow tell nukes to become relatively harmless high-explosives was aware of what they were willing to do.

"…if we just roll over and play dead, it shows he's _won._ " Protested Judge Landers, fruitless as she must have known it to be.

So many win conditions for the enemy. If Calvin died a martyr's death, his legacy would inspire others. If he found out where they had their strongholds, and he could will nukes into life, he would leave not even ash…

…then again, not even Gathwells knew where they were, and chances are if these metahumans had any idea, they'd be dead by now.

"…if we attack, and they find a way back to us, then we have lost." countered Derricks.

"They won't." Grant said, with a sudden level of calmness. "They have no idea of where we have our main bases, or how they're linked. They're still searching deserts and ocean trenches for us."

A chuckle from Landers. A satisfied hmph from Derricks.

"Landers is completely right. We cannot allow this opportunity to go unexploited."

Barry whipped around-

There was Malefides, smiling with hands steepled, in a chair of quality that Barry knew wasn't available to some schmuck of his level…

He had known, after watching the footage of that smiling bastard shrugging off punishment that would kill an entire R.A.W. hit squad and throwing cars around, that Malefides was _not_ what he seemed to be. Like a child hiding under a blanket, hoping that not seeing the monsters meant they would go away, he had not pried deeply into _what_ Malefides was…

But every single instance of these things he _should not_ be able to do confirmed that silent hypothesis he'd formed in the back of his head. If his old pastor had seen this… thing that presented itself as a man, he would be screaming every bible verse he knew.

Seeming to deem the reactions of his startled allies- _fuck, was he considering Him an ally?_ \- inconsequential, Malefides (or the thing wearing his skin) continued. "My followers have painted the youth of the day as monsters, demons, warmongers, craving destruction and depravity. I say we give this statement truth. Beer and food laced with aphrodisiacs and drugs to enhance paranoid beliefs, such as your psy-warfare department is working on, Grant. Small arms, telling them they need to be ready to defend themselves."

Barry understood immediately, a fact that make him proud and vaguely terrified. "…then we convince their parents to come get them?"

Malefides smiled, and Barry felt the prayer he was about to say in the back of his mind disintegrate into infinite specks of dust. "Exactly. An orgy of hormonal, drugged teens with guns turning on their poor, worried, long-suffering parents."

That would accomplish a fair bit, Barry admitted to himself. The Exodus protest being shown to be nothing but a drug-fueled orgy would destroy any validity that the protest had about Malefideism's teachings. It would martyr Malefidians, driving them into R.A.W.'s arms, and give truth to the lie- the world would see that, left to their own devices, the youth of today reverted into savagery.

"R.A.W. won't need to ever show any involvement." Malefides said with a closed eyed shrug. "It'll just look like at best a bunch of abused teenagers lashing out, or to our more devoted, that we were right all along."

It was, as it always was, cruelty for cruelty's sake. From what Barry understood, R.A.W. had more money than God and Bill Gates combined- any monetary gain from ransoms or theft was appreciated but not the main focus. It had always been, even before Barry had ever set foot, about making misery.

Yet…

"…and if your plan fails?" he asked.

Not because he didn't think it was a good idea, mind, but because-

"In case our dear reality-raping friend or another outside factor renders my operation moot, I trust you know what to do." Malefides said simply, not even looking at Barry.

Napalm it was, then.

…

Colorado was chosen as the state to hold the "New Exodus" protest-slash-camp, partially owing to several large campsites whose owners were sympathetic to the cause.

To put it bluntly, the result looked like a tent city for homeless people. A bit cleaner, but a tent city nonetheless.

Jeremy Duncan, blonde, 17, and for once in his life, absolutely, completely, legitimately PISSED OFF, couldn't care any less what an outsider thought of the appearance.

For now, at least, here was not home, and that was good enough for him.

The tent he had was small by most standards, but it would have to do.

"So what's your story?"

He turned to look at a boy about his age, buzzcut hair, grey shirt, tattered jeans. There were several partially healed cuts on his arms and face, his lip was healing from a split, and he had a fading black eye.

Jeremy assessed him for a second. What the hell, it wasn't like it could hurt at this stage- "My teachers and my parents wanted to do a real life PSA about how raping someone means hell for the rapist. So one of my teachers claimed I raped her, my mom and dad lied and said I'd told them I'd talked about wanting to do it…"

"Oh fuck, you're that guy? Duncan?" Both eyes lit up in realization. "Fuck man. Did your dad actually knock you down and kick you?"

Jeremy nodded. "Fucking stomped on my face. Told me later he had to make the experience as real as possible. Didn't get your name."

"Nick Cooke."

The truth had come out when his friends and girlfriend, the only group of people that knew Jeremy wouldn't even _consider_ such things, had done a little digging, found witnesses that had seen Ms. Butcher, his accuser, during the time the alleged rape was taking place, found proof he was somewhere else…

"What the hell did they say to you after everyone found out it was a hoax?" asked the man.

Jeremy paused. Just thinking about it made his blood boil, and even now he had an inexplicable urge to break something very important. "First… first they said they knew all along I didn't do it, and that they were lied to. Then, when the teacher who said I raped her cracked and told the police everything, they said it was for my own good."

The boy made a derisive noise. "For your own good. Yeah. My old man said that every time I got a B and he got the bat. Mom tried to point out cracking my skull open didn't help, but that just made him madder."

"Jesus." Jeremy said, disgusted.

"She keeps saying I need to give him another chance, and he keeps saying he'll get help." The boy shook his head.

"Yeah, you hear a lot of that here. Mine promised they never meant to hurt me more than absolutely necessary." Jeremy shrugged. "This coming from a mom who tells people I parked a car on top of the garage."

Nick helped him get the last peg set into place.

"She do that often?"

"Exaggerate? All the freaking time. I don't know if it's a disconnection with reality, or if she just can't stand not being the center of attention, but it's always how she and dad are dealing with some non-existent catastrophe I caused."

They looked up. Tents for miles around, port-a-potties being wheeled to areas, some teens playing football, a few just sitting on the ground or in chairs, looking into the distance dazedly.

"You think this will change anything?" Jeremy asked aloud, his rage having cooled finally.

"I dunno. Like they say, you never really appreciate what you have until it's gone. Maybe some will wise up and stop listening to a fucktard who tortured his own daughter."

If not, Jeremy thought resignedly, at least they could have a little time away from the lunacy.

One day three months ago, he had gone to school like any other, then suddenly, in the middle of lunch, two uniformed officers had slammed him face-first into the cafeteria table and arrested him.

Ms. Butcher, a teacher who had delighted in Jeremy's misery since the day she had met him, had made a phony rape report.

After many, many blows at the hands of his parents, Butcher, and police, Jeremy realized that absolutely no one cared about his side of the story. The officer interrogating him, in between gut punches, told him if he didn't confess, he'd take him to some desolate highway, shoot him, and leave his corpse to rot.

He was about to confess when another officer came and pulled his interrogator off of him. His friends had made several disturbing discoveries on his behalf.

The rape accusation was not entirely Butcher's idea.

It was lunacy at first, and he had required proof in the form of one shaken counselor's testimony and a swiped email, but he soon understood the grim truth- his parents and most of his teachers had conspired to frame him for rape.

There was a mediation session just a few weeks ago, which boiled down to _We were completely in the right to frame you just for a little teaching scenario, and if you don't make a public statement it was all your idea we'll make sure you never graduate._

As soon as his mother started quoting "Get with The Program" with that glassy-eyed squawk, he knew logic wasn't going to work, so he had left in the middle of the night to come here, hitching a ride with Pierce, a sympathetic friend, leaving behind a bat-shit insane mother doing some sort of insane dance in a white bathrobe and a dejected father with a broken nose.

His hand still hurt. But goddamn, it was a good hurt.

His high school was a wreck- this shockwaves of the debacle had all the sane parents withdrawing their children, teachers who weren't part of the conspiracy resigning, not to mention Butcher's arrest and total disgrace.

His dad's dentist business was in the toilet. No one wanted a parent who was willing to ruin their child's life for a public service announcement working on their teeth.

No, this… _vacation_ wouldn't solve any of his problems. A betrayal of trust of this magnitude and all the ramifications its exposure brought about would not be laid to rest in just a few days.

 _Imagine then what must have brought the others here._ A voice in the back of his head prompted.

He didn't want to imagine. He wanted to rest.

"Oh, hey-" said Nick. "You hear about those terrorists attacking Newden?"

Who hadn't? "Crazy, man. Crazy. News says some people brought nukes into the city. Most schools in Cleveland, where I'm from, were closed."

"Yours didn't?" Nick asked with a raised eyebrow.

"With everyone jumping ship, ours was already closed. No teachers, no students, no class." Jeremy said with a shrug. "Anyway, from what I heard in between bullshit storms, the nukes were to kill just one guy."

"You're shitting me. Who would you need five nukes to kill?" Nick responded incredulously.

"Some kid named Halgins."

…

" _In light of recent events, we feel it necessary to reiterate what occurred with Jeremy Duncan and his family."_

" _While the tactics used were severe, the intent of the exercise of accusing Jeremy of rape was meant to serve as a warning to other students about the damage engaging in such criminal activity can cause. While Jeremy was asked to pay a high price for this lesson, restitution would have been made when appropriate had he been understanding."_

" _However, due to the actions of several of his friends and his own unwillingness to obey, the lesson has been ruined. A loyal, stern but fair teacher is in jail, awaiting trial. Many teachers have abandoned our school. Students have left us out of anger and fear."_

" _As a consequence of your actions, grades for all students this year are a flat zero. This, we believe, is a severe enough consequence to get the message across that obedience is demanded regardless of how unpleasant our teaching methods may appear."_

" _The faculty- what remains of it- is deeply ashamed of our students, especially Jeremy and his allies, and hope that this sort of severity will cull your future rebellion. Future incidents of divisiveness will be punished much more harshly."_

-Principal Thorn of Klein High School, Cleveland.

…

Where Kyle was, he didn't know.

If this was hell, he expected more fire. Now, he floated in blackness.

Pastor Victor. A fist. Lights out.

It wasn't nice, really, being consistently right about the people around him.

"But two plus two is four, even if you don't like four."

Who-

"I'm you. Or, rather, your inner self. Your _ego._ "

Into his field of view stepped a… it was him, and it was not him. It was how he wanted to see himself. No scars. No limp. Clean. Strong. Better.

Not-Him frowned. "You've seen better days."

A pause. "No, actually, that's a lie. Even before the accusation, you weren't being treated well. You've forgotten partly because what's happened, and partly because of all the kicks you took to your head, but even before all this, life sucked."

"What?" he heard himself ask.

"Age 4. Mrs. Jennings' house."

And suddenly, as if he was watching from a camera, a vision came into place.

He remembered this vaguely… his parents had dropped him off at Ms. Jennings to be babysat.

A command to sit at the table and be quiet, which he obeyed. Then he hears himself ask, after thirty minutes of sitting in silence while Jennings watched TV.

Suddenly, she got up, and got a fireplace poker… and he remembered.

How he survived that beating, he didn't know. Jennings knocked him out of the chair with the first swing, sending him sprawling to the ground. Then she just kept pummeling him…

" **Wow.** " Said Not-Kyle. "That is brutal. And what _did_ mommy and daddy say?"

Fast, discordant images from his perspective, as he lay in a hospital bed, as he limped through a painful recovery, impeded by Jennings tripping him during church…

"You need to forgive, Kyle." His father said sternly.

"Jesus says you have to forgive." His mother chided.

"Tattling isn't forgiveness."

"You have to say you just fell."

Not-Kyle pursed his lips. "Not… exactly very protective."

Images of being tripped and kicked by Mrs. Jennings while he limped assailed him.

"Age 5. Mr. Mallory's house. A whole year before you were ever accused…"

Something in his blood froze.

"You remember, don't you?" asked Not-Kyle sadly. "The… 'games'. How he made you pull down your pants. How he made you touch him. How he touched you. How he beat you."

 _No_

"It went on for months. Your mom and dad said he just had urges and you needed to forgive, and if you ever told, you would have to go back to Mrs. Jennings house, and they'd tell everyone you were a bad Christian…"

 _NO NO NO NO NO_

"You always wondered, 'why did they let him do those things to me? Why did they send me there, over and over and over, when I told them it hurt to take a shit after what he did?' You never found out before Jennings accused you and the abuse got serious, did you? Well, I can tell you…"

Kyle wanted to shut his ears, block it all out, send the memories of pain and shame back to where they came from, some dark closet in his mind, but his eyes and ears would not close here, in this abyss…

"He paid them."

He choked.

"You remember the shiny new television? Or the new car? Or mommy's new necklace? That's why they kept sending you back."

He wanted to call it a lie, that there was a line his parents would not cross, that they still had that innocence… that they wouldn't… that they _couldn't…_

But he remembered the new TV. The new car. The pretty new necklace his mother had snapped at him not to touch…

Always after the 'games'.

"No one ever said they're sorry, did they?" asked Not-Kyle, shaking his head. "No, of course not. Kyle doesn't deserve a 'sorry'. Kyle gets told to forgive, forgive, forgive and forget, or he gets a spanking. Never mind he can't sit down already. Kyle can take it. We'll pimp him out to sadists and child molesters and expect him to be fucking Jesus 2.0, but if he so much as gets accused of… of taking chicken feed… _not even two hundred bucks…_ we'll turn on him and beat him bloody every day. These holier-than-thou fucks want you to forgive instantly, and want six years of penance over… what? Less than two hundred fucking bucks?!"

He tried to scream, but couldn't. It was like he had no lungs…

"One last question, Kyle… do you ever remember being happy?"

And suddenly black void became sterile white ceiling, and he sat up, gasping and retching…

A nurse grabbed a pan for him to puke into…

When he was done, shaking and shivering as horrible memories compounded with endless misery slammed into him without end, the nurse asked, in the kindest tone he'd heard in his entire life, "Are you okay?"

 _Do you ever remember being happy?_

"No." he sobbed brokenly. "No."

…

An Xiao was a girl who practiced logical thinking over magical thinking. Experience, both personal and vicarious, had repeatedly taught her that there was no Deus Ex Machina that would make everything right when problems appears.

If your mother couldn't protect you from your father the first eleven times he'd blown up and started hitting you, for everything from a B-grade to contradicting his lies, then she wasn't going to find the courage in time for you to be able to crawl away with most of your limbs intact.

He'd only stopped kicking her in the stomach as she lay sprawled on the floor because a business call came for him. Her mother had shrunk into a corner, mortified but silent.

Not that she didn't have a plan.

An sat in a lawn chair, trying to find a good position that didn't hurt.

Here, at the Exodus, her story was not uncommon.

You had the abused, the neglected, the people whose complaints ranged from that their parents disagreed with their hobbies to that if they didn't get away, they would be beaten to death…

Mostly older teens, but there was a strong sense of comradery here- the world had beat them down more than enough. They didn't need to do it to each other.

Offhandedly, she thought of Jason, who had gone so far as to make a thinly-veiled death threat forbidding any retaliation against her on his behalf.

Her father had promised, as so many abusers had, that'd he'd never do it again each time he'd hit her. That he'd get help.

Maybe the Fox kid took requests…

Beside her sat a brown haired girl in grey sweatpants and a purple t-shirt, looking for all the world like she didn't care if she lived or died.

Her eyes rolled her way.

"Parents thought it'd be funny to force me to strip to my underwear and get in a slime tank in front of my school. I can never go back." She said sadly.

To be fair, the question An was going to eventually ask- what all comers to Exodus asked and were asked- was "what's your story?"

"…why?" An asked. It baffled her, why someone would resort to such a drastic invasion of privacy and decency…

"Our new pedo-principal has a fetish. He offered them 500 bucks to make me."

Sadly, stories like that weren't the worst she'd heard. Lots of kids who'd been kicked out for being gay. Whole bunch who had left before their parents use of "Get with the Program" got them killed. Others had some messed up sexual abuse, everything from a rapist relative to their own parents pimping them out to get fast cash.

"You?" she asked, looking drained.

"My dad beat me for not going along with some bullshit lie he made up to get another kid kicked out of school. Mom did nothing." An kept it short and sour, she'd save the longer version for a book.

"Malefidiot?"

"Yep. Yours?" An asked.

The girl just looked into the distance. "Mom was always crazy, and dad was in denial. They probably will be Malefidiots before this is all over." She looked like she wanted to cry, wanted tears to flow…

…but couldn't.

An knew. There was a point where you couldn't cry anymore. Your body just refused to waste more energy sobbing and sniveling, you can feel the despair and the worry crushing you into the dirt…

…but you couldn't cry.

"You know what gets me?" The girl looked up into the sky, clouds gathering and darkening- rain.

"They didn't understand why I was upset."

…

" _Calling someone beyond redemption is not something to be done lightly."_

" _We want to believe that most people who have made mistakes can be rehabilitated. That they can reform. That no one is inherently so evil that there is no chance they can ever be redeemed."_

" _I have no choice but to call Malefidians beyond all redemption."_

" _If you pick up a how-to-guide on sadistic abuse written by a child abusing phony pastor who spawned a child abusing cult, and you feel anything besides disgust and revulsion, chances are you were already too far gone to be saved. The book didn't make you an abuser. The book gave you ideas and an excuse you were eager to use."_

" _I don't think it unfair to say that when someone makes a point of going out with the explicit mission of raping a girl or torturing a boy to death, they have crossed a line that separates humanity from monsters."_

" _So I won't pretend that I'm trying to save any Malefidiots any more."_

" _I'm addressing those of you who are sane enough to reject a book that suggests daily flogging and gaslighting as the very least of the horrors one can inflict."_

" _Don't let these people near your children. Don't let them near anyone else's children. This is not prejudice, it is a learned bias. The leader of Malefideism encourages raping and murdering children."_

" _I know some of you have heard about what I've done. That I've killed people. It's a very logical conclusion that when someone my age has a death toll to their name, they are not to be trusted. That there is something seriously wrong with them."_

" _Fair enough."_

" _You don't have to trust me. But for your children's sake, don't trust anyone who follows Malefides."_

-Calvin's Blog, "Beyond Saving"

…

Kyle lay awake in a hospital bed.

They had pumped him full of enough sedatives, medications, and painkillers to make an atheist blue whale see Jesus, and yet…

He couldn't sleep.

His parents had whored him out.

His _parents_ had _whored_ him out.

With that fact in place, what else were they capable of?

Did they know all along that he hadn't stolen the money?

Were they punishing him as part of some sort of sick game?

 _What weren't they capable of?_

"Do you really want to find out?"

He tilted his head.

Not-Him sat in a chair that had not been in that corner before. Ordinarily, this might concern him, but seeing as he couldn't pronounce half the shit they pumped into him, he felt entitled to talk to whoever he felt like- ceiling fan or hallucination.

"No." he answered. He knew enough that when parents started pimping out their offspring, they didn't have their child's best interests at heart anymore.

"They will overcome this." Not-Kyle said sadly. "They'll sacrifice Jennings, or Mallory, and they'll say they never knew. Let's remember- you're dealing with experienced liars and sociopaths here. If all they have to do is sacrifice a few of their own to save their own skin, they'll do it without batting an eye."

"Then, when they feel threatened by what you say about them… or what you _might_ say about them, they'll arrange for you to…" and here Not-Kyle did air quotes, "…run away. Or hell, they might skip the turning on each other all together and just do what Jennings did to those three kids, ship you off to Grindstone to die."

That settled it, then. He would make sure that the police knew about the full extent of everything he'd been through, so that there was no way in hell they'd release him back to his parents-

"Let's say that works." Shrugged Not-Him. "Let's say they're content to just sacrifice Jennings, for example, say she did all the beating. They'll collaborate, say you're delusional, get it all dumped at Jenning's feet, and then leave you behind. They will pay for nothing they've done while you try to sort out life in a foster home. That's the best case scenario in that situation."

Something churned in his gut.

It wasn't right.

He had been punished all his life, whether it was for someone's urges or something that wasn't ever done, and it would be all too easy for nearly everyone involved in his pain to just get off easy…

"But what can I do?" he asked desperately. "All I have are some scars and a story."

"You've forgotten what else you have." Not-Kyle chided.

"What?" He had no recordings, no special abilities, no friends, no resources…

"You have **hatred.** " Not-Kyle told him. "And let me assure you, with my help, you'll find that all you need is hate."

"Because you see, hate sustains. If you didn't hate them enough to deny them the satisfaction of your death, you'd have killed yourself a long time ago."

Was… was that the only reason?

"Think about it. You know for a fact that God either hates you, or doesn't care enough about you to mention to the one person supposedly preaching his words, "oh hey, that kid you're kicking the shit out of? Yeah, he didn't steal anything. Also, the Mallory guy in your congregation raped him, so tie a millstone or whatever to him and drop him in the deepest body of water you can find." You also know your parents don't love you, and that the reason they want you to forgive is so that they can go back to pimping you out to Mallory whenever they need a new toy."

"Okay, fine!" Kyle snapped. "I hate them. I hate all of them. But how the hell does that help me?!"

"Without true hatred," Not-Kyle explained calmly, "a human has limitations. Conscience. Ethics. Morals. When these… cobwebs are swept aside and you can focus on your hatred, not just crass rage but true, genuine hatred, when you decide that the only acceptable outcome is that everyone who has wronged you must die, **then** and only then can you make any progress."

Silence.

"So what do I do? Get a gun, and start hunting them down one by one?" he asked quietly.

"That's one way of doing things…" admitted Not-Kyle. "…but with people like, say, Jennings, you may want to be more… _creative_ …"

…

Agatha Brown pretty much loathed every single woman on her block, but there was a special place in her hate engine of a heart for Laura Jennings.

As a corrections officer in a female wing of prison, Brown had seen a lot of scum. Abusive mothers. Teens gone wrong. Women who personified a black widow, bedding men and women, then killing them for money…

…but Jennings was the kind of cancer that poisoned the air around her.

From what she'd heard, the woman had accused a child six years ago of stealing from a church and began a campaign of abuse and encouraging others to abuse him. Depending on how much you could wrangle from the investigators, however, the abuse might have started years before the accusation. Police had found blood stained knives, fire pokers, and homemade whips in her house, along with photos that had made a judge deny her any hope of bail.

Now she was going to escort the sack of shit to take her medications.

For her, the story hit close to home. Her grandmother had always enjoyed beating the shit out of her as a kid, and her parents had turned a blind eye to it for years. When the old hag was on her deathbed, Brown, then 13, had been asked to give her forgiveness.

She had sweetly told the dying woman to burn in hell, flipped her the bird, and walked back to the car despite her father's demands for apology and forgiveness and her mother's wails.

As it was, she was not allowed to just toss Jennings in a cell and let her starve to death. It would be more than fitting- it would be humane compared to what she'd done, but she needed the job more than she needed catharsis.

The old woman had been placed in a solitary cell after two women had heard about what she'd done and proceeded to beat the ever-loving hell out of her, knocking loose three teeth and breaking her arm. If it were up to her, she'd have let nature take its course then handed the responsible parties a mop…

"Jennings, on your feet, time for meds." She fumbled with her keys.

There was no sound from within the cell.

"Make no mistake, I don't give a fuck if you're sixty or six-hundred, if you screw with me I'll-"

There was a splotch of black-red visible through the window.

 _Oh, hell._

That would be all she needed at the start of her shift, a suicide. She sighed as she opened the door…

…and something that…

…might have _been_ human…

…spilled out…

There were wide strips of _something_ on the blood-covered floor and

 _Oh God_

A hand, or part of one in the corner besides an eye, and…

Brown turned away and grabbed her radio. "We've… we got a problem in Cell B-1726…"

 _Understatement of the year._

…

Dr. Walters noticed Kyle was smiling this morning.

He thought about asking him what made him so happy, then decided against it.

Whatever it was, he deserved it after what he'd been through.


	4. Vox Populi

Tiger Chronicles: Exodus

Chapter III: Vox Populi

…

All Hail Bill Watterson.

…

Laura Jennings fumed: Her FUN had been interrupted.

Kyle's destruction had been a long term project of hers, and while the revelation he was innocent of the false charges she had placed against him was a setback, it was one she could overcome.

Her arrest, however, was another story.

Word of what she'd done had spread quickly, somehow- whether someone had outside information or it was just loose lips among guards was irrelevant. As soon as other women had heard what she had done, almost the entirety of the holding cell had joined in a contest to see who could brutalize her the worst.

The damage was severe. Coppery blood pooled where three teeth had been dislodged. Her right arm throbbed with pain, broken in several places. Her ribs were bruised, cracked… it was hard to tell. Only a doctor could discern the exact amount of damage.

She had been placed in a solitary cell for her own protection, and they had left her to languish.

First order of business after getting a lawyer and getting out: Sue. Put everyone here out of a job and into a cell of their own. Nothing short of absolute annihilation of every life involved was going to satisfy her.

Secondly, and she frowned as she considered this, Kyle was going to have to die. She would recruit Mallory, the man had a perverse appetite for little boys, and doubtless the idea of one last degradation would entice him. The idea of ending his life so early in her 'game' incensed her, but Jennings was no fool. The time to play and enjoy the game had long since passed.

She could almost see the smug look on the boy's face, staring her down, mocking-

She blinked.

Standing not three feet from her was Kyle. Bloody. Bruised. But smiling. He was shivering, for some reason.

"How the hell did you get in here?" she asked, disbelieving.

"I have friends." Kyle responded coldly.

At this, Jennings was disappointed. She had made it her mission to ensure Kyle had no friends, no allies, nothing but absolute hatred and disgust every which way he turned.

"Eight years." He said plainly. "Eight. Long. Years. Even before you accused me of stealing, you liked hurting me. Why?"

Clearly she was dreaming. Passed out from the pain. Odd, her arm still hurt. "I don't need to give you a reason."

Kyle shrugged. "You're going to have to give a judge a reason sooner or later. Might as well think up one now."

Her subconscious had a point. Later, she would concoct something practical, but for now…

"You want a reason? I'm older than you. I'm wiser than you. I'm stronger than you. That's how the world works, THIEF. If I want to hurt you, I will. If I want to humiliate you, I will! If I want to kill you, then by God, I am entitled to burn you alive and shit on the ashes, you arrogant little bitch!"

Kyle didn't move. "So the strong deserve to do whatever they want to the weak? That's what you believe?"

"Yes, you bitch! Yes!" Jennings snarled, and she swung with her left hand, dream be damned…

Kyle caught her hand before she could slap him. "Good."

His hand was like a vise, and she squeaked as she heard something grind in her wrist, pain shooting up her arm.

" **Then this shouldn't come as a surprise.** " _something_ growled from his throat.

Kyle pulled, and her arm exploded in pain at her left shoulder as he swung her, slamming her back into a wall, a rib shattered-

She screamed as he picked her up, digging a thumb into her left eye socket, and she flailed, scratching, clawing, kicking at his face, his legs, anything to stop him. Her blows were wet tissue paper, and Kyle just chuckled as she felt her left eye _burst-_

" _HELP! SOMEONE, ANYONE, HELP!"_

Kyle kicked out with his foot, stomping on her left hip, and she screamed in raw agony as bone and muscle were pulped into a blob of tendons and bone splinters.

" **Go ahead.** " He snarled in a voice that was _NOT_ Kyle, and though her good eye was blurred with tears, she knew he was smiling. " **Call for help. Scream like I screamed. Beg like I begged. Plead like I pleaded. BLEED LIKE I BLED!** "

He was Satan.

Oh God.

 _He was Satan._

 _ **He was Satan. She'd lied but she'd told the truth-**_

"Get out!" She screamed desperately. "In the name of Jesus, I command-"

Kyle lunged, grabbing her by the throat and smashing her head against the back wall of her cell-

" **You rebuke me? YOU rebuke me?!** " it was a voice of confusion, as if the thing didn't know whether to be offended or laugh.

And it decided to laugh, a cacophony of nightmares that made her ears ring and hurt, and she just wanted to die, to make it all end…

" **Jesus I know.** " He grabbed her hand and slammed it into the toilet bowl, and she wretched as putrid toilet water and blood filled her nose. He pulled her out, and slammed her through the sink, shards of cheap ceramic gashing her back, and she gasped in pain.

" **Paul I know.** " Kyle's face distorted, a smile two feet wide and lined with yellowed razor teeth, his nose bulbous and red, his skin hideously pale…

Jennings had always been afraid of clowns.

Until she had left home at 19, she was convinced, that one day, when she forgot to put a bible near her closet, a _pagliaccio_ straight from hell's bowels would erupt from her closet and rip her to shreds…

…and here it WAS.

" **Aw, hell!** " shrieked the now massive head, hair a fiery wig of orange and red flames, lips a dead blue and eyes acid green and purple, spitting flies and hornets that stung and swarmed her. " **I even heard'a Soozy Doikens!** " it boomed, its voice a horrible combination of a clownish simpleton meshed with the buzzing of the thousand hornets that churned in its cell-spanning mouth.

And Kyle, the clown from hell, ripped off her eyelids, grabbed her by the throat, lifting her to look into his unnatural eyes, portals to a place of darkness and pain eternal.

" _ **BUT WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?!**_ _"_

Eventually, she told herself, as barbed worms dripping black, acid ichor from countless spines erupted from his flesh to burrow into hers, making tunnels of burning agony in her battered body, it would end.

Eventually, as he spat boiling bile, scalding her and making her gag and vomit, he would nick an artery or crush her skull, and it would all be over.

Eventually was taking a very long time.

And with her last snapping thread of sanity, it occurred to her that eventually might never come.

…

A teenager was the first responder to Calvin's request that one of the many attendees of the New Exodus give him their story. The gist of the initial text back was that before Malefideism had entered his life, it was already harsh, but the introduction of "Get with The Program!" had kicked the abuse into high gear.

A little further inquiry yielded some interesting facts. One, his father was a pastor of a small church in Pennsylvania that had taken to Malefides' teachings as the new gospel. Two, that pastor was current serving time in Newden's penitentiary for making a threat against the mayor's daughter and openly stating plans to stage an armed protest during the Verdant Junior High graduation.

Ronald Brinks wasn't exactly shedding tears over his father's plight.

"So, let's take this from the top." Calvin suggested, reclining in his seat a little. It felt wrong, doing this from the comfort of his own home, but at the same time air conditioning and having a cold drink available had its charm… "You say before your father got involved with Malefideism there was abuse?"

For a moment, the voice on the other end was silent.

"…it was always something." He said finally. It wasn't typical teenage bitterness- it was a head-shaking anger, a disappointment. "If I got good grades, it was my 'attitude'. If I said yes sir, yes ma'am, did all my chores when I got home, spent all my free time studying, it was 'being selfish'. And every sin was worth at least ten licks with a belt. Used the buckle end, too."

 _Jesus Christ almighty._

"You said when I contacted you that you didn't think your father actually cared whether or not you improved, right?"

"It was like…" Ronald paused. "You know how some people get hooked on something- drugs, booze, whatever? It was like that. It was like he needed to hit me. Once, he had to go out of town, and he had to stay away for like, three days longer than he'd planned. I made… I made sure everything was perfect- homework done, entire house cleaned, everything…" Ronald's voice began to waver. "The minute… the very second he walked through the door, he punched me to the floor, ripped his belt off so hard it broke two loops, and just…"

There was silence for a moment.

"…the bastard was never satisfied. Never. So yeah, I'm glad he's in jail. I hope they cut him up and feed him to the dogs. I hope they never let him see the sun again. Because that piece of shit ain't happy unless he's hurting someone."

"…what about your mother?" Calvin asked.

Mirthless laughter from the other end. "Oh, she's always making excuses. 'He means well.' 'He had a bad day.' 'He's hard on you so you'll grow up to be a mighty man of God.' And I'm like… bitch… bitch _please._ If he keeps this up, I'm not gonna grow up period."

Calvin paused as he jotted down notes. "…what are you going to do when this is over? The Exodus thing, I mean."

"I dunno." He said sadly. "If I go back home, if dad ever gets out, if he gets out and he finds out I ran away… I'm a dead man. I can't go back. My teachers wouldn't listen. The police wouldn't listen. The way I see it, alive and hungry on the streets is better than waiting to die back home."

That was one confirmation of his assumptions. The book, as he had suspected, wasn't some unholy tome that had the power to transform good parents into R.A.W. candidates. All it did was provide closet abusers- or those who already were openly abusive- with another excuse.

Ideally, he wouldn't be asking people about the worst experiences in their lives. He'd be looking for R.A.W. compounds, evacuating hostages, then nuking them-

 _ **Focus.**_

The hero impulse was still there. But now there was also a sort of rational thought, the realization that his luck could only be pushed so far.

"Hey, listen-" Ronald said. "Bunch of other people wanna talk to you, if you're interested."

There were names for him. The Destroyer. Toughest Kid in Ohio. "OhDearGodNo".

Part of him felt there was something very, very wrong about using fame brought about from killing to achieve his goals. The other part of him reminded him that his enemies had no such reservations.

…

There were rumors about the kid from Ohio- Calvin Halgins.

That he was trained from birth as an assassin. That he was a metahuman. That he could kill someone just by thinking about it. That the Newden nuclear threat was done entirely to get rid of him. That R.A.W., an organization he claimed was devoted solely to killing and torturing kids, considered him enough of a threat that nuclear obliteration was deemed an appropriate response.

There was also one particular fact that stood out.

Calvin was who you spoke to if you were a minor, had been wronged by the insanity of R.A.W. or Malefideism, and wanted your story told.

People had tried to silence him. Through intimidation. Through force. Through sabotage. They were all dead or in prison, now.

When you told your story to Calvin Halgins, you told it to the world.

…

Gathered around one of many, many campfires, three teenagers wound down the first day of their 'independence'.

Jeremy Duncan shifted a little. His ribs still hurt- being punched to the ground and kicked repeatedly by your own father had that effect. The latest text from his father was a pleading one, saying that multiple patients had dropped him as a dentist over the whole mess. Ordinarily, his father being out of a job would have been disastrous for him, but he'd already resigned himself to the fact he can't go home again.

April Patterson took a long drink from a can of soda. She was offered a beer, but she knew in the back of her mind the last thing she needed is to be drunk here. She was assaulted once while sober, God only knew what would happen if she was drunk…

Ronald Brinks just stared at the stars. He'd told his story, for what little that would do in the long run. He'd been playing to run away since five, right after his father smashed all his action figures and beat him for an hour over spilling a glass of milk.

"So how'd the interview with The Destroyer go?" Jeremy asked, breaking the silence.

"Pretty short, pretty simple. He's a down to earth kinda guy." Ronald responded.

April looked up. "…Destroyer?"

"That kid making all the news in Ohio. That's what some people call him. He's interviewing people here, says it's to show how Malefideism fucks up families."

"His family buy into it?"

"No." Ronald said. "That's the strange thing. From what he says he's got a great mom and dad."

"So what's his stake in this?" asked April.

"He's pissed." Ronald answered simply. "He says he saw a lot of kids die during the Grindstone raid."

Jeremy thought for a moment. "…is it true what they say? That he's a meta?"

"I dunno. Hasn't said anything one way or the other. All I know is, you go through a death camp and come out okay, you have a crazy goddamn judge cult go after you and come out okay, then someone tries to nuke your city and fails?" Ronald gave a short laugh. "You got more than luck on your side."

April for her part took all these stories with a grain of salt, her own situation notwithstanding. The rumors said the Ohio boy was capable of everything from espionage and gun combat to calling down lightning on his enemies. That everyone who had ever wronged him was dead or wishing they were.

Staring into the flames as the two traded stories of how they'd heard this wunderkind had exploded a car or raided a city, she wondered if he took requests…

…

"She's safe."

Those two words seemed to make Eileen exhale some breathe she'd been holding for who knew how long, and she relaxed slightly. "Did she say when she was coming back?"

Jason shook his head. "No. From what she told me, this on top of the grief people gave her over her father's bullshit? She doesn't want to come back."

He was going to need to kill some people to make it clear he was serious about his ultimatum, that much was certain…

Eileen was silent for a bit. "How have you been doing?"

Jason shrugged. "Insurance and the lawsuits helped a lot. We're looking for a home, Paige and Mom went shopping to replace all her clothes-"

"I meant how are **you** doing?" Eileen interrupted.

Oh.

How, exactly, did he tell her?

Tell her that it didn't bother him anymore, that he had excised that redundant shard of guilt?

He was viewing the world through a very different lens; that much he was aware of. To end the life of someone who was trying to kill you in the name of a _Not Human_ thing was no longer murder- it was the elimination of a cancerous cell with the human species as the body, something to be done as much as possible and without wasting time considering the morality of defending one's self against a devoted murderer- in a shorter answer, _justice._

But Jason knew that this explanation was the sort of thing found in manifestos and documents used by lawyers to prove their clients were so far gone, so insane, that they could not be held responsible for their actions-

 _Is that what I am?_

"I'm…"

 _Am I so fucked up that it doesn't bother me at all?_

"…managing."

A nice way of circumventing telling her that while Marcus was still waking up screaming, he had discarded his own last shreds of needless guilt. An evolution, like a pokemon- suddenly the cute little tortoise had two massive cannons, the little yellow fox was a psychic god of death, and hundreds of other examples of innocent, cute little creatures growing into walking weapons.

Eileen was smart enough to know that kind of short response meant he either wasn't ready or wasn't willing to talk about it- he could see it in her face- and so she let it drop.

Sometimes, the kindest thing to say was nothing at all.

…

Scott Mallory, unlike many other child predators, knew he deserved to be arrested.

Just not for the reasons one would think.

He had berated himself as he was placed in a police car. He should have scrubbed his hard drive. He should have destroyed the videos he'd taken. It might have helped a little.

Or maybe it wouldn't have helped at all, he thought as he lay in a cell, praying that the musclebound biker on the bed adjacent didn't know what he was in for. He turned, his neck hurting as he did, tension killing him…

Sound asleep. Had been ever since lights out. From the lack of noise, everyone else was too… He had gotten a little rest, then woken up with a pain in the back of his neck- these stiff cots did not agree with him.

Maybe it had been posting on those websites. Uploading his "punishment sessions" with Kyle for the enjoyment of others like him.

Maybe despite the hush money, his parents squawked after all.

So very many stupid mistakes. But he was drunk on the high of Kyle's pain, and when Jennings accused him of stealing and he could have a punishment session in public at any time he wanted…

He rubbed the back of his neck- ow. He'd tweaked something, and rubbing made it worse. Oh well, it wasn't like he was going to be able to sleep anyway…

No one would have guessed he was a child molester from the looks of him. He was well built, short brown hair, a face that screamed "single male, ladies inquire", and truth be told he had taken very good care of himself physically… present condition notwithstanding.

The judge in charge of deciding whether or not he could post bail had taken one look at the stack of evidence seized in the raid on his house, gave him a look of utter disgust, and denied bail then and there.

He remembered vaguely after one particular brutal punishment he'd given Kyle, oh-so-satisfying for him, that the boy, bleeding all over and hoarse from crying, looked up with pure hate in his five-year old eyes…

"I will kill you for this."

He had written it off as the last act of defiance from a boy he had taken great care in breaking. But now…

Dwelling on his situation only served to reinforce how many exits could have been secured beforehand, if only he had taken more precautions. There was no way out of this, aside from some miracle of getting through prison alive. Even if he did, he'd be a marked man. The bank he was with had already washed their hands of him. His friends on the websites he'd gone to would refuse to associate with him out of fear of being caught.

"It's not nice being all alone, is it?" came a familiar voice.

Scott looked up, startled.

Where the burly, muscled biker should have been, there was now Kyle, smiling happily.

Scott Mallory was aware enough of what was and was not possible, even in his despair, to know that this was a very, very bad thing.

"Oh, wow, you catch on quickly." laughed Kyle, the laugh echoing off the-

…empty cells, there was no one else, he looked out of the bars for a guard or another inmate but there was NO ONE…

"…a pain in your neck. You can't breathe for a moment. You look over at the big, bad motherfucker you were sure was going to beat the shit out of you, and he's still asleep. Miraculous, isn't it? Unless…"

 _Unless he was waiting for me to fall asleep._

"They say there's no honor among thieves. Well, they're wrong. There's business, and then there's what you do, and what you've done gets you rewarded with a shank to the throat. So that just leaves one question: if you're not in prison, and you're not dreaming, gosh oh gee, wherever could you be?" Kyle put his hands over his mouth in mock surprise.

Even though he knew it was futile, he banged on the door of his cell, trying to get the attention of someone, anyone…

…and the door flew open.

"You remember the games we played? Like 'bend Kyle's finger until he says Uncle', or 'Punch Kyle if he doesn't strip'? Good times. Good times." Kyle mused. "Well, now… I have a game I'd like to play. It's a bit of a classic. You may have played it before…"

The floor at the back edge of his cell suddenly began to glow red hot, then burst in a bubble of red-gray liquid rock, blasting him with a scalding sulfurous stench.

"… **the floor is now lava**."

And without so much as a pop, Kyle was gone.

He scrambled out of the cell, looking frantically for an escape, but all ahead of him was an infinite corridor of jail cells, some of which began to glow with the ominous sickly orange-red glow of lava…

As he ran, stumbling, he could see the flood of molten rock beginning to build behind him, like some sort of hellish blob monster it advanced, searing heat at his back.

A spiraling staircase, rusted and dilapidated, was his salvation, and he scurried up as fast as he could, running up away from…

The staircase terminated abruptly, leading to a blank, grey ceiling, illuminated only by the orange molten hell below…

The room was boiling, making him dizzy. The stairwell groaned and swayed as the rising lava melted it, and then Mallory understood.

All the games he had played with Kyle were games that Kyle was meant to lose, and lose badly, so he could engage in whatever punishment amused him the most at that time. There was never a 'win' condition for the boy, and he was certain during their last sessions together that Kyle knew the games were all so much a farce for Mallory's more depraved wants.

His soles melted, scalding his feet, and he clung futilely to the rusty metal pillar as the lava continued to rise.

There was no escape. No platform to jump to, no mercy. In a moment of panic, he had made the ridiculous assumption Kyle would have allowed him a win condition…

The pillar creaked.

"No." he pleaded to the sea of boiling orange death.

The pillar groaned and his pants ignited from the shear heat.

"No." he begged again, as the pillar tilted inexorably backward, lowering him to a fiery baptism…

Liquid pain sheared away everything. Sun-bright inferno filled his eyes. His screams were cut off as lava burned through his throat.

He could hear Kyle laughing.

…

Barry Wilkins did appreciate Malefides. He really did.

It was obvious that Malefides' team was going to be the winning team, and whether or not R.A.W. would still be relevant in his plans was yet to be seen. The important thing, now, was to make sure he remained 'useful' to Malefides.

He just wished he wouldn't stare off into space and smile, like that. It was creepy.

So he, and the others in the White Room discussed what to do concerning this Exodus, and did their best to ignore Malefides' occasional laughter at some private joke only he got.

…

Jeremy Duncan faced the laptop, sipped a coke.

He could have a beer. It would be rebellious, and when you learned that obedience counted for jack shit, you had every right to be rebellious…

…but it's what his parents would expect.

So fuck them.

"Mom was always…" he paused. He tried to find a civil word, then realized he had no obligation to be civil…

"…fucking crazy. Lied about me constantly. Said I parked the car on the garage. That I was ungrateful. That I cheated on school papers. Big stuff, small stuff."

"Any idea why?" asked the so-called Destroyer.

He didn't look like much. Spiky blonde hair. Younger than him. But if the rumors were to be believed, this boy had caused more death than most soldiers did in their entire careers…

"I think it was attention." He answered honestly. "My mom needed to feel like she was a martyr, or being unfairly punished. I tried to be nice, be helpful, be…" he sighed, dammit, he would _not cry here…_ "…be what she wanted, but it was never enough."

"Was your dad like that?"

"No," Jeremy shook his head. "Dad was either out to lunch or yelling at me about something, but he didn't go the martyr route."

"They ever talk about Malefideism before this? Or 'external parenting', anything like that?"

"No." Jeremy answered in the negative again. "At least, not within earshot of me."

"I always knew they were disappointed in me. I wasn't a super-athlete or a math prodigy. I didn't come up with the cure for cancer when I was fifteen. I knew when I graduated High School, that'd be it. I'd be out on the street." He took another sip. "But they never talked of Malefi-whatever until after I'd been arrested."

"What about Ms. Butcher, the teacher who lied about you?" Calvin asked.

"Oh, her." Jeremy groaned. Where the hell to begin? "I don't know what the hell I did to piss her off, but she's had a serious hate-on for me since 9th grade, and it only got worse after I got out of her class. Mostly it would be lying about petty shit- I was ditching class, or I was starting a fight- never thought she'd stoop to lying about rape, though."

Calvin's face was calm, but there was something in his eyes… something… _off._ "…so this was the latest and most severe attack in her 'campaign' against you, as it were."

A campaign against _him?_ Jesus. It… made more sense when you looked at it that way. "Yeah."

"Did she said she was sorry at all-"

Jeremy doubled over laughing, involuntarily spraying grape soda in a burst of guffawing. When he could breathe and see again, Calvin had a poker face. "…aaaaaaah I'm gonna take that as a no."

"The bitch…" Jeremy caught his breath. "…the _**bitch**_ laughed when she saw how beat up I was, during a meeting where these fuckers who lied about me tried to get me to say I was in on it all along. Then when I told them 'fuck you', she said she'd do it again later."

"Seriously?" Calvin asked, disgust evident in his voice.

Jeremy nodded.

"What… what the fuck did your parents have to say about all this?" Calvin asked, the mask of professionalism breaking a little under the sheer idiocy of it all- good. That vindicated him, even here, in a mass of the rejected, abused, and disowned, the voice of his people wasn't so jaded as to not even blink when he heard the story…

"My dad said it was necessary and if I was truly a man, I'd go along with it and wouldn't hold it against them. My mom quoted the Malefuck's book and did that dance-"

"…sorry, the dance?" Calvin asked.

"There's this… I'm not going to do it here, too fucking embarrassing, but they jump around, throwing their arms in the air, clasping their faces, singing how wise and wonderful they are…"

"The Celebrant Dance." Calvin sighed. "It's typically done after punishing someone or whenever they feel upset. Some just do it for the hell of it."

"It's like…" Jeremy ran a hand through his hair. "…they were always off. Mom exaggerated. Dad was out of touch. Super-strict. But I always thought… I always thought they had a limit. A point where they'd say no."

Smiling sadly, he shrugged. "Well, now we can all be disappointed with each other."

…

No one questioned Kyle's presence in the camp. To the others, he was just another kid, a little younger, who had been on the bad end of Malefideism or something like it.

So he made himself fit in.

He didn't need to embellish as he told the sad tale of his childhood.

The older boys winced when he told them about being beaten with a fireplace poker. The girls cried when he told them about Mr. Mallory's games. All were outraged when he told them of his six years as a pariah over a pittance of cash he'd never touched.

He did, however, leave out certain… _recent events._ No one needed to know about his mid-night visit to Jennings. Or that Mr. Mallory was trying to bargain with any deity whatsoever as he stumbled and ran away from a rising flood of magma.

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he knew the power that granted him the ability to see and do these things wasn't coming from some holy angel of vengeance. Or anything holy, for that matter.

But Gee-Oh-Dee had six years in which to show him that he gave a flying fuck about his being stomped into the ground by his loyal servants, and in his mind the statute of limitations had long expired.

"Man, it's like that in a lot of religious homes." One boy said, shaking his head. "Christian, Muslim, Mormon, Buddhist, whatever… they got verses and parables for punishing you over and over, and others for why you need to forgive them even before you're done bleedin'."

This was almost too easy. Oh well. He could use a breather exercise.

"It's not just religion." Kyle said, gaining some listeners. "It's this deeply ingrained belief that someone that happens to be older than you is always somehow justified doing things that would never be excusable for people like us. I mean, for example- if you get suspended because a teacher… oh, I don't know-"

The voice spoke to him…

"-said you threatened to bring a gun to school and shoot up everyone, and they did it because you made a good counterpoint to their outdated, misinformed argument- well, so what? You're a kid. Even if… _**Even if you are punished for something that never happened,**_ it's still justified, because, oh, 'life isn't fair', or 'well I felt threatened', or 'you need to learn to be more respectful'. So many excuses, and none of them justify it."

The boy, a wiry hipster type, stared back. "How the _fuck_ did you know that?!"

 _Oops._

The power made a suggestion…

"Lucky guess?" Kyle shrugged carelessly. "I mean, you hear all the stories here, the unfairness, the kicks in the teeth, you start to get a feel for this."

The hipster relaxed.

"But yeah," Kyle agreed. "It's worse with religion. They smack you for something you didn't do, you point out you didn't do it, and according to Jezebadiah 32:13 section b, it's a test from God, and you failed by getting angry, so you need to make it up to **them** and pray to God for forgiveness and understanding." He made a noise of disgust. "Spoiler alert. I prayed for six years. It didn't work."

Cynical laughter rumbled around them and some of those raised in religious homes shook their heads knowingly.

"Man, at the rate things are going, fuck praying to Jesus or Buddha, I'm praying to Calvin. Offer him a twenty, see if he can do to my old man what he did to Highweller…"

 _Pray to Calvin. Of all the insipid…_

…

Somewhere else, in a small, darkened room, Malefides heard the sarcastic suggestion as well.

The power processed this information. It considered how these disenfranchised youths viewed the spiked-haired bastard.

As a hero.

As a champion.

As a _savior._

A plan came to Malefides, unfolding like a fractal masterpiece, and for a moment, he trembled in awe of the possibilities.

And in mirth darker and colder than the farthest reaches of the cosmos, he _laughed._

Two rooms to the left, Montgomery Charles, a ten-year veteran breaker for R.A.W. considered dead to all stimuli except a child's screams, sprang awake and began alternating between vomiting and begging his dead children for forgiveness.

Rebecca Umbridge, three rooms to the right and recently promoted to her long coveted position of chief financial supervisor, calmly retrieved her standard issue cyanide-round pistol and decided tonight she would end her life.

In total, fifteen people in varying distances from Malefides' room suddenly suffered from what R.A.W.'s Psych Evaluators were forced to conclude was a sudden and inexplicable event of mass insanity, the results of which included incoherent babbling, nausea, self-injury, and in five cases, suicide. None of the afflicted had any history that would suggest attacks of conscience or mental defects.

Barry Wilkins, however, chuckled, rolled over, and went back to sleep.


	5. In Calvin We Trust

Tiger Chronicles: Exodus

Chapter IV: In Calvin We Trust

…

If it's already been copyrighted, I don't own it.

Holy hell, sorry for the slow pace. Don't leave yet.

…

" _I remember being taught I always had to forgive."_

" _It didn't matter if I was beaten to a pulp by a witch of a woman, or fucked in the ass THEN beaten to a pulp by a pedophile, it doesn't matter if a crime I didn't commit got me beaten and humiliated and demonized for six years, even if everyone else is a complete monster, even if they never consider forgiveness for something I proved right off the bat I didn't do, I had to forgive."_

" _Fuck. That. Shit."_

" _You don't get to torture me for years and then tell me I need to forgive because someone who treats being nailed to a cross as a minor inconvenience said I have to. I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't shrug off that kind of punishment. I'm still limping from being worked over all these years. I still get sores on my face as a consequence from being fucked in the ass. I've been handed permanent consequences as many of you have."_

" _As will probably come as a total non-shock to most of you, not once did I get an apology. Ohhhh no. No, apologies are for_ _ **children**_ _to make, and then it is up to the elder to decide whether the apology is sufficient. But an adult fucking kicks you in the ribs forty times and you're supposed to forgive them 50 times so they can have a few extra turns at you."_

" _That's not hyperbole, by the way. That was actually told to me after they found out I was innocent. 'They need to wean themselves off', my mother said."_

" _I'll summarize with this- why the hell should we forgive our offenders for things they've done, when we're punished, yes, even after the fact of innocence, for things we didn't do?"_

-Kyle's first sermon to the New Exodus camp.

…

"My parents are idiots." April said succinctly, not even really bothering to look at the laptop's camera.

She considered her words for a few moments. Off to the side, other teens waited their turn to speak to Calvin.

"…yeah, I know that's probably said a lot here, but seriously- my parents are idiots."

Calvin's face was calm as he absorbed this assertion. "What was the final straw that made you join the New Exodus?"

April knew somehow that she was talking, but it didn't feel like talking. It felt like hitting play on a badly recorded home movie. Her voice was shaky, detached, like a nervous little girl reading a dictionary out loud.

She wasn't looking for more sympathy. In what was a much-needed affirmation of her faith in humanity's future, no one at the camp had given any indication that there was anything sexy or redeemable over stripping a minor down to her underwear in front of the school and forcing her into a gunge tank.

She knew it was reprehensible. A betrayal of trust in her school and her parents. But it healed her a little to know that an outsider could look at that situation and deem it fucked up.

…but a change had come over Calvin, visible even via laptop.

His eyes had gone cold. He wasn't blinking as much as before. He did not move or resettle himself in his chair. She looked briefly at the other teens, who were unnerved as she was…

Even across the gulf of the internet, Calvin's fury was palpable.

A thought came to her, that this might not simply be an interview, she considered as she affirmed that yes, Mr. Dregs, her principal, had tried to grab her and hold her to take a picture after she had been slimed, and Calvin's hand gripped his desk until the knuckle's became white.

This was not just some adolescent offering her a chance to tell the world she had been wronged.

Calvin Halgins. Avenger and destroyer. It sounded so ludicrous until you actually _looked at him,_ and saw the promise of hell in his eyes...

Had she just signed three people's death warrants?

…

In the past, Hobbes noted, Calvin's rages were fiery and explosive, kicking or smashing the thing that offended him while ranting loudly and furiously that a beanie propeller hat that didn't let you fly was an injustice against him and kids everywhere.

But like an inferno, he could not maintain the fury for long, and whether by virtue of exhaustion or distraction the rage would dissipate.

He was not that Calvin, now. Not anymore, Hobbes realized.

He sounded calm. He looked calm. Only certain tics betrayed him, made it clear that the calm he had reached was not a zen impartiality or discarding anger as futile, but a cold, lasting hatred.

He could feel the icy cold across the room. He wasn't breaking things, or shaking with rage, Calvin seemed at first glance to be sedate.

"Well." Calvin said calmly, letting go of the desk after the interview, thirty minutes of listening to some poor little girl detail how her parents and principal had conspired, for no good reason, to humiliate her horribly and unconscionably in front of her school.

Calvin took a deep breath, then exhaled.

Explosive anger was dangerous, but like a wildfire if you saw it and stayed at a safe distance, you would be fine. Hatred could be focused, refined, perfected.

The question was not whether to kill those involved, it was how painfully.

The problem was that once one got used to killing, the reservations and mental safeties that made one hesitate to pull the trigger eroded. It got easier. Add reality-warping powers into the mix and you had a recipe for disaster.

In the back of Hobbes' mind, he felt that if anyone deserved the unchecked wrath of a vengeful, righteously indignant teen with the power to make someone's life a literal living hell, it was this Dregs asshole.

…

The teens of the New Exodus weren't there to be preached at. Most just wanted, with the desperation of a drowning man, to get away from a truly abusive environment for a little while, even if that meant roughing it.

And some would listen to your story patiently as long as you listened to theirs in turn, but no one really felt like being lectured.

So Jeremy Duncan had to admire this kid, whose balls probably hadn't dropped yet, giving a sermon that held all at rapt attention.

"You're going to be called crazy. Hell, if any of you are forced to go back, they'll probably send you to a shrink to get your head examined. Don't worry- it'll be a chance to lie on a couch and explain how being kicked and shat on has left you with some trust issues." Kyle explained.

"But you're not crazy." He assured them.

"You're not crazy, selfish, or rebellious to wipe a bloody nose after the umpteenth time daddy or mommy had a bad day and took it out on you, and say to yourself "I am not a punching bag". It's not spoiled to get away from people who… frame you for rape, FUCKING knowingly frame you for rape!-" he gestured at Jeremy, and there were sympathetic noises of disgusts, one boy saying aloud 'that ain't right'… "-because you know that sticking around will only get them to try again with something else, and when your parents go so far as to try and pimp you out for someone's sexual satisfaction in any shape, form, or fashion, stick a fork in your family- it's **done.** "

"But they call us crazy. They call us unhinged. They call us ungrateful, unappreciative, uneducated, irredeemable, irreparable, irrational… they call us all these things, and they demand, not ask, DEMAND respect on a level that would make a Mesopotamian Death God cult cringe."

"And there's no winning!" Kyle continued, making Jeremy nod. "There is no win condition! Spend time with them and they'll complain to you, God, and everyone about you being unemployed! Get a job and bust your ass, and they'll complain you don't spend time with them! Get good at sports and they'll complain you don't study! Study and they'll complain you're not more active! And if by some Herculean feat you're a star athlete with all A's and a steady job who dutifully brings out cookies and coffee during their weekly meetings with other parents to discuss just how fucking awful 'kids like you' are, the moment you plop down in front of a TV or a computer screen to do something other than act like a wind-up doll, you're a lazy time-wasting bitch or bastard freeloader who wouldn't survive five seconds in their day, when in **their day,** they weren't working part time jobs, they weren't A+ students, they weren't respectful and obedient, they were finding everything they could smoke, drop, or drink, fucking each other, fucking themselves, fucking their future!"

Kyle stopped his tirade to let the message sink in.

"If you just decide to say, 'screw it, I'm doing what feels good now', they'll point to you as an example of what all kids are in there minds, but if you try to step up? Do something good? They will demonize you as worse than the mutant lovechild of Hitler and Satan! Stand up to a bully stomping the shit out of a kid he pulled out of a wheelchair? You'll get arrested and expelled while the bully gets absolutely jack squat done to him except at the most- AT THE MOST- being made to shrug and offer a barely audible 'sorry' to the paraplegic turned quadriplegic by him tap dancing on a kid's neck!"

A muscular girl, who Jeremy heard was a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, stood slack jawed, blinking dazedly at that last part.

"But hey let's say that you doing a good deed doesn't even involve kicking the ass of someone who has it coming. Let's say your actions are lily-white, Jesus Christ is proud to call you his own, Mother Teresa innocent! Let's say you're Susie Derkins and you fork over a sweet hundred to try and encourage your classmates to help a bunch of homeless people engage in that great American pastime, 'Not Starving To Death'. And it WORKS. Kids get up and help, doing exponentially more than this one girl could hope to do all on her own, just because she decided she wanted to help more than she wanted anything else!"

Silence. Everyone had heard the horrible, gut-churning-rage story, but the point was still crystal clear.

"SURELY no one could find fault with her, whose only selfish desire was that it looked good on a resume! SURELY no one would ever have the gall to call her selfish, or an anarchist, or the WHORE OF BABYLON!

 **SURELY** if someone did do that, if someone had the black-hearted, puppy-stomping sadism to ever fathom doing that, they would be called out on the spot by those in authority!"

" **No.** " Snapped Kyle, furious. "That is **not** what happened. Two judges came to her school, hired a crooked cop and his son- who I have to admit really _was_ every horrible thing they say we are- and together they waged a campaign of physical abuse and humiliation against a girl for **running a charity.** And what did the police do? NOTHING! What did the courts do? NOTHING! What did other parents do?! NOTHING! NOTHING! NOTHING! It took the Destroyer, still recovering from a cowardly attack, to film them trying to shoot him in a restroom to get anyone up off their asses! For a solid month, everyone with the power to stop cold Highweller's campaign against the Patron Saint of Charity sat on their hands! And when they DID do something?! When they did start dragging their feet? No arrest warrants were made for Marrin or Highweller! None! And when Highweller came back and tried to bomb her school to the ground, who stopped him? The police? NO! Calvin freaking Halgins! A thirteen year old literally did better than the Newden police, the National Guard, and the FBI **combined!** " Kyle paused to let the lunacy of the events sink in, prompting looks of disbelief among the increasing throng.

"When the army arrived in Highground, Calvin had already rescued Susie and left dozens of kid-hating psychopaths dead! And when Highweller, this judge…" Kyle laughed bitterly. "This… JUDGE, who was somehow deemed fit to judge juveniles, and wasn't disbarred within his first month… This Judge decides that the only thing left to do is blow up a hospital! **BLOW. UP. A. HOSPITAL!** Now, listen! I'm pissed! You're pissed! If you're here and you're not pissed, you took a wrong fucking turn at Albuquerque! But _no one here is 'I want to blow up a hospital' pissed!_ Sane, rational people, even when they are angrier than they've ever been or likely will be in their entire lives, don't blow up hospitals! So who stops him?! Who ultimately saves the day again?! The army? The national guard? This 'Superman'?! NO! Several got taken out by Susie's daddy, righteously pissed, but the majority got taken out by a "elevator malfunction". Sure, whatever. And then Highweller tried to kill Calvin and got struck by lightning." Kyle held his head in mock thought. "I dunno. Two simultaneous elevators that worked fine suddenly break and kill eighteen armed terrorists? Then their leader tries to shoot The Destroyer and gets lit up like a Christmas tree? People try to kill Calvin and nuke Newden and all that happens is that a bunch of terrorists and psychopaths get blown to hell and back? Makes you wonder who you should pray to. Maybe a burnt offering to Calvin would get you more results than twenty bucks in the offering."

Scattered laughter.

"The point I'm making is… whether or not you are obedient, whether or not you are a good student, whether or not you display the classic virtues, it does. Not. Matter. And yeah, I know anyone can say that in the long term, a thousand or a billion years, nothing matters, so I'm not going to make that argument. In the short term, obedience and respect to these authority figures does. Not. Matter. You are still an ungrateful punk or a prissy little bitch who probably deserves a few kicks in the rear to put you back in your place, and… let's… let's just be perfectly honest here? God help you if you're not white. God have mercy on your soul, the one thing that may still be intact if a cop thinks you blinked funny, if you're not white. Some asshole- an adult asshole, whiter than my scarred ass, robs a convenience store ten miles away, so a black, fifteen-year old male walking home from school gets two clips emptied into him by the city's finest because apparently holding up both hands above your head is a death threat." Kyle let his arms slump to his side. " **OUR ROLE MODELS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!** " he shouted angrily.

A black girl near Jeremy, eyes dripping tears, nodded angrily…

"So what's the lesson to learn from all this, Unca Kyle?" Kyle asked in a squeaky, cartoonish voice. "The lesson is that in this system, this rigged 'heads I win, tails you lose' travesty, obedience. Is. Pointless. It's shoveling quarters into a broken slot machine with a sign that says 'fuck you' taped on the front. And after shit like, I dunno, busting your ass to make all A's so your dad doesn't bust your ass with a belt- and let's face it, it was never to help you, it was to satisfy his sadistic jollies- only to be told by some 'elders' so out of touch with reality they might was well be living on Pluto that you're expected to go on a four year mission trip to some dark corner of the world so your belt-wielding, soul-destroying, drinks-even-though-it's-verboten pappy can say he raised you right when the only thing he did was make every last comfort in your life a mortal sin… no one should get to say you're being selfish when you decide you're not going to sacrifice more years just to add a few inches onto his ego-penis."

One boy, straight-laced, who had never sworn once during the time Jeremy spoke to him, swayed. "How did he…?" he gasped.

"So, let's say, somehow, after years of being treated like you just raped an entire kindergarten class, you survive to be out on your own. You know what years of abuse and being treated like crap does to you? At best, you will be paranoid. You will be distrustful of authority, after years of being trapped in a network of adults who are convinced the bowel movement that took you three minutes longer than usual is a sign you're going to shoot up the school. You will wake up screaming and sweating over the horrors you witnessed and were subjected to. You will hear some fortunate few reminisce about their happy childhoods and you will wonder, 'huh, wow, so you got taken to Hawaii for your 16th birthday and I spent mine shoveling manure and getting beat with a bullwhip dragged through said manure, because my uncle thought it was funny? Interesting.'"

One girl near Jeremy jerked, blinked.

"On top of all this, we live in a day and age where, at any given moment, we can be shipped off to a… Death Factory to be tortured to death by… anyone. Our parents. Or, if you're lucky to have parents who realize you can't grow up to be a model citizen if you're dead, you can be shipped off by a teacher. Or a neighbor. Or a complete fucking stranger, anyone who can pin you down long enough for one of R.A.W.'s death vans to come drag you off to a place that will eradicate any faith in a loving God you might have left. Hell, some assholes aren't even patient enough to let R.A.W. do the work for them- they go out in groups to rape and murder children. One group killed a little boy, five years old, by shoving him into a deep fryer, after killing his mother and several other people who tried to intervene." Kyle shook for a moment. "…can you imagine just how sadistic someone would have to be to do that? How devoted to senseless and completely unjustifiable sadism for the sheer hell of it someone would have to be, just to be able to do that?!"

"So we are supposed to respect and obey unconditionally a system run by people who abuse, misuse, and falsely accuse us every God-damned day that we're stuck in their God-forsaken system, and when a few of us finally snap or just say 'fuck it', and hope shrooms or pills will give them a few good dreams, they point to them and use them as proof to condemn all of us, every one, as so far gone that the only way we can ever be salvaged is to pick up a torture manual written by a backstabbing, lying, child-killing asshole who didn't have the guts to stop his lies before they did catastrophic damage and let him instruct these assholes in a myriad amount of ways to eviscerate, humiliate, and eradicate us, and when we limp away, bleeding and crying in an effort to live a few days without misery before they decide in their 'wisdom-wisdom wonderment' to deep fry our face like they did to that poor boy, they call **us crazy!** " Kyle threw his arms up in exasperation.

"I don't know anymore! Maybe I **am crazy! Maybe we all are!** **Maybe I'm howling at the moon here, unaware of how brain-damaged I am,** because I spent six odd years getting the shit kicked out of me because some idiot pastor couldn't be bothered to look under his **FUCKING PODIUM** for a pittance of money I could have made up by mowing lawns for a week, only to be told that I need to forgive _sans_ apology because Jesus understands that adults make mistakes once in a while, give or take an entire childhood, and continue being a sex slave to a pedophile parishioner and a goddamn butler to Satan's grandma because everyone is too used to making my life a living hell to be able to Cold-Turkey quit screwing me over literally and metaphorically! So is it _really any surprise to anyone with two brain cells banging around in their skull that I am one more insipid, irrelevant, outdated child-abuse advocating bible verse away from_ _ **COMPLETELY LOSING MY SHIT?!"**_

Dead silence in the camp.

Kyle took several deep breaths, exhausted. "…but hey." He said quietly, yet everyone hearing him. "It's not like this is news to you. I'm just recapping stories you've heard and lived before."

He gave a small, sad shrug, and walked away, without ceremony or adieu, to an ice-chest where he retrieved a coke and guzzled it down.

…

Orville Dregs returned to his home around 10 PM, still bearing the marks of savage vandalism, after an unsuccessful attempt to get drive-through fast food unmolested.

The rotund man parked his small compact in his garage, gingerly touching his left eye. That would be a shiner, definitely. A fellow patron at the McDonalds had recognized him and voiced his displeasure with a single, buffalo-dropping right. He had woken up two hours later on the floor of the McDonalds, with a small mountain of trash some others had felt justified in dumping on his prone form.

One joke. One. Little. Joke. That was all it took to turn the whole world on him.

He sat there, exhausted. His house was a wreck, egged, spray-painted, windows busted, prize roses and lawn salted to death. When he wasn't assaulted trying to get necessities, people flat out refused him service- a cashier, fresh out of high school, had refused to ring him up, exploding into a profanity-laden tirade at him.

On any other occasion, she'd have been fired. Instead, her manager joined in the applause.

Yes, it was a humiliating experience- there was no fun if it wasn't degrading and embarrassing. But April had refused to listen, understand that in a few years or so everyone would forget about this, and that she needed to be a good sport…

 _Honestly, kids these days._

He grabbed at the door handle to head inside and resume sweeping up glass...

The door didn't open. He grumbled, and flicked the lock to open-

Still locked.

So now his car was broken as well. Just lovely.

He tried the passenger door. Nothing. Even his machines rebelled against him. Neither of the back doors worked either…

Panic struck him, until he recalled he could simply turn on the engine, roll down the windows, and climb out. Wonderful, yet another massive inconvenience, having to flop out of his car like some burglar caught in the act…

He turned the key, lamenting how everything was going downhill at an insane pace, and his engine gave a pop.

This made no sense. He'd had the car inspected recently, and the only issue was that the oil needed changing, which he'd done. What the hell was going on?

The sound of cracking glass in front of him got his attention, distracting him briefly from the reality of being locked in his own car.

His front windshield had cracked suddenly all over, jagged lines spider-webbing out in juts. He wasn't sure how, but he was certain that in the short time he'd been unconscious, someone had sabotaged his car…

The cracks spelled something.

He blinked, unbelieving the message spelled out by the fractured glass.

"NO MEANS NO"

A flicker of movement in his rear view mirror caught his attention, and he turned to stare out the back.

There, at the end of his driveway, clad in black sweatpants, jacked, and wearing a ski mask, was a boy or a very small man.

The boy shoved one hand into his pocket, and raised the other to flip the bird.

…

The target was trapped. His finger was on the trigger.

No one would mourn his passing, however violent and painful burning to death in a locked car would be. There would be an investigation, but he'd like to see them try to trace it back to him.

 _So why was he hesitating?_

He'd done it before. Three times in a row. Find a van, find a bomb, transmogrify, BOOM, next one.

This… _thing…_ he could not bring himself to call it a person… was a molester at best. That should be enough for anyone.

It should have been enough for him.

So why wasn't it?

This should be simple. He was a pedophile if ever there was one, with no regard for boundaries or basic human decency.

One squeeze.

One.

Squeeze.

It shouldn't be hard. He'd killed before. Two R.A.W. agents. Threw up, but recovered. Then lots more during the compound raid. Dozens dead when all was said and done with the Highweller debacle. Three dead when he detonated trucks carrying once-nuclear bombs. Then Joe Caldern…

There was a pattern emerging, here. Everything had been done in defense of himself or another.

 _It gets easier._

It got easier with every kill.

To extend that definition of defense to include killing a child molester in cold blood would make him something he wasn't ready to be.

Not yet, if ever.

As Dregs futilely kicked at his windows, he decided that maybe a night locked in his car would give him pause, and that he would let his crucifying of the bastard via blog do the rest.

He light-particled away before anyone could find him.

…

Susie Derkins was thought to be one of the most polite, modest girls you'd ever meet by mostly everyone that had met her.

Oh, sure, there were those who swore up and down that she was the Whore of Babylon, but those were the kind of people who could only achieve arousal by flogging children and who treated child torture manuals like a bible. Others felt she was humble, generous, and polite- give or take a few snowball wars with Calvin in the past, or odd dreams about running through a rainy field with him in the present.

But by her own admission, she had a bitchy side, a side that sometimes came out when the world just seemed hell-bent on screwing with her, like today, when idiots just would not take no for an answer…

"Let me make sure I have this straight." She began slowly, waiting for the preliminary aches that signaled a migraine to pass as she sat in her living room, she and her parents on one side, the Creeksons on the other.

"You basically tortured your son for six years, and now you want me to encourage him to forgive you now that he's run off to this 'Exodus camp' and is basically telling everyone that you used him as a punching bag over something that, even if he **had** done, should have been a month of punishment at worst."

"Disciplined." Paul Creekson amended. "It was harsh discipline, but we meant well-"

"You meant well." her father, whose face had been frozen in disgust and disbelief, repeated emotionlessly. "You meant well when you punished him for six years for something you had no evidence he did, and now you want my daughter to convince him to forgive you, the pastor that punched him, and the church that abused him?"

A moment of awkward silence passed. A nudge in the back of Susie's mind prodded her. It might have been God, or just gaining a really cynical sense of how these things went, but…

"Have you apologized to him?" Susie asked, already guessing…

…knowing, with absolute and total icy clarity, the answer before she asked…

"Well, you have to understand, when a parent apologizes for making mistakes, it weakens their authority-"

"Have. You. Apologized. To. Him?" Susie repeated.

"You know, it's really, really rude to interrupt-"

"Stop." Susie said, exasperated. "Just… **stop.** You're wasting my time and yours. I should've slammed the door in your face, and told dad it was Jehovah's Witnesses or a wrong address. You don't want forgiveness, you don't want absolution, you want to be told that somehow, you were right all along. You have Midas Delusion- the belief that no matter how badly you mangle something, everything you touch turns to gold. You want him to forgive you very quietly, very covertly, so everyone can pretend it never happened."

"You have to understand, Susie," said Natalie Creekson, her voice sickeningly condescending, "sometimes grown-ups make decisions that are painful in the short-term and make no sense to kids, but in the end they only have their best interests in mind."

To her credit, as soon as she'd finished her sentence, the realization she had said the absolute worst thing to the absolute worst person of choice hit her full force, and she blanched.

"So." She spoke finally, with a tone that could have frozen hell. "Highweller had only good intentions when he shot my classmates, kidnapped and tortured me, blew up a hospital, then-" she lifted up the left side of her shirt, and both of the Creeksons winced at the faint dot and line like scars, "blasted me with a shotgun?"

She lowered her shirt. "I know you haven't told me everything you've done."

The father jerked.

"I don't know what made you think that I would be willing to help you bring him back to a church that made a religion out of abusing a single child, or even if I was that he would listen. What I went through destroyed my faith in the justice system and the belief people are inherently good. I can only imagine what your actions have done to your son. Get out," she snapped, pointing at the door. "and don't come back."

"But we need you to lead him back to the light," pleaded Paul. "before being around all those angry teens makes him hate God-"

"You did that well enough yourselves. Now **get out.** "

Paul stood angry, started towards her, but a quick glance at the behemoth of muscle that was her father made him reconsider, and he and his wife trudged towards the door.

As his wife exited, Paul turned to give Susie one last spiteful look.

"Highweller was right about you. All of you."

Then he left, slamming the door behind him so hard it made the windows rattle.

"Remind me again why we let them in?" Andrew sighed.

"I think it was politeness." Susie grumbled, now wishing she had suggested some painful and pointless form of penance… maybe peeing on an electric fence…

…

" _Simon Highweller had a name for Susie Derkins- the whore of Babylon. I have a much more concise name- Hypocrite."_

" _A self-professed Christian, one would_ _ **think**_ _that she would jump at the chance to lead a child gone astray back to God, the child in question being Kyle Creekson who, as you all know, is the same old song and dance of 'I got punished for something I hadn't done yet, now the world owes me an apology and a blowjob'. Well, his parents went to Susie Derkins, in the hopes of using her, someone whose name for better or worse commands respect these days, to try and patch things up with their son. And what happened, my faithful?"_

" _She told them to get out."_

" _A grieving mother and father, torn from within over a simple mistake, begged her for help in mediating reconciliation, and she_ _ **spat in their faces.**_ _She called them unrepentant."_

" _This is beyond nonsensical, considering her relationship with a boy who has admitted- OPENLY and WILLINGLY without any coercion of any kind, he has admitted to killing dozens of grown men and women in the name of his twisted campaign. Or perhaps I'm mistaken. Maybe it takes disrupting a lawful court proceeding to rescue her from the consequences of her own selfish actions to gain an indulgence from her holiness."_

" _I know I must sound like a broken record, harping on this, but I feel it bears repeating, just in case any of you are still in that safe-feeling delusion of "No, no, he couldn't have said that, that couldn't have happened". Susie Derkins, the girl the media would have you believe is a victim of 'cruel and baseless slander and assault', prefers the company of a mass murdering sociopath to aiding a Christian family in coming back together."_

" _No. You're not in hell, and you're not having a nightmare. This is our new reality."_

-Malefides on the Creekson Family


	6. Their Stories Will Be Heard

Tiger Chronicles: Exodus

Chapter V: Their Stories Will Be Heard

…

You could have stopped this, Watterson.

…

Calvin had heard, in researching methods of torture to use on Moe back in his youth, about a method called Chinese Water Torture.

The process was simple- strap someone down so they couldn't move, and drip water, drop by drop, on their forehead. Eventually, they'd either do anything to make it stop, or they'd go insane.

Dregs wasn't worth the waste of water, so Calvin decided to take a different approach after reconsidering killing him directly.

He returned, repaired the car completely of all the damage inflicted, both by him and by Dregs as he desperately tried to escape.

Then he changed the locks on his front and back door while Dregs was meeting with a lawyer, necessitating a locksmith.

He broke in while Dregs was absent and rearranged the contents of his pantry and refrigerator. Then he started sabotaging appliances and furniture, so that flipping the switch for a ceiling fan caused an explosion and smoke, and sitting down in a recliner caused it to flop to pieces.

Every piece of electronic surveillance Dregs bought to catch proof of his burglar or poltergeist somehow broke beyond repair. When Dregs sought refuge in a hotel, he made the TV inoperable, stuck on a Spanish channel at full volume, with the air conditioner stuck on a sweltering 90 degrees. These problems ceased the moment he called a housekeeper to check on them, and when he tried to buy a soda to soothe his nerves, he was profoundly disappointed that his lemon-lime had been replaced with carbonated urine, the can of course replaced with a perfectly normal, opened soda when he tried to contact police about a stalker.

A simple, unaddressed note stuck in his door- with locks changed again, of course- read simply, "The Eyes of God Are Upon You". The rest of his house, including a collection of markedly underage-looking anime dolls, was untouched. The next morning, he awoke to find each of the dolls kneeling, holding their own decapitated head.

This would have been bad enough, if many of the dolls were incapable of bending their legs. Or if they were previously wearing expressions of sadness and disappointment. But now, they all knelt, the magical girl holding her severed head, cute face now tested into disappointment bordering on tears… a look of betrayal…

They were circled around a disturbingly accurate doll of _him,_ crucified on an inverted cross.

Dregs didn't normally drink at 9 am in the morning, but waking up to that, and finding that the cameras he had exhausted his savings to buy and set up had detected _nothing…_ that warranted some liquid courage, surely…

…except he found no courage, only cat urine. _Warm_ cat urine.

If anyone witnessed all of this, and saw the conclusion of the hellish nightmare he had been put through- calling the police again, only to find that everything had been reset to normal, dolls, beer and all- they would have understood.

It would make perfect sense for Dregs to strip nude and run out into the street, screaming and clawing at himself, banging on a neighbor's door incoherently as the very police who came to his house rushed to intercept him, unable to articulate his request, "please tell me you're real".

It would be excusable that he be reduced to shuddering twitching and mumbling when, after being tazered and thrown in the back of a cop car, he came to the conclusion that God had dropped all pretense of being a bystander and had decided to actively drive him insane.

As there were no witnesses and no footage to suggest anything besides Dregs being on drugs or simply out of his mind, (who knew what the fuck went through child molester's minds, anyway?) he was thrown in a cell to sober up overnight. Out of mercy, they gave him a cell of his own, lest a morally outraged detainee decide that a child-molester like Dregs was better off dead.

He lay there, now 2 am, on a hard bed, strangely comforted.

Whatever was in the house wasn't here. Here was safe. Come what may, he was away from _there,_ where the laws of physics/Satan/God/whatever had decided to actively wage war.

He closed his eyes to try and get some sleep…

There was a faint click of movement.

He opened his eyes to see his anime figures lined along the floor… with his head in place of the girls' original ones.

All of them were engaged, with little toy props, in some form of suicide. A magical girl dregs committed seppuku. A mecha-pilot Dregs held a pistol to his head. A Dregs with a fighting game girl's body prepared to hang himself…

It took seven hours, multiple injections of antipsychotics, and several sets of restraints before Dregs finally calmed down enough to accept that there had never been anything toy-related in his cell.

By the end of the next day, he had made a full confession of having planned April's humiliation month's in advance, having spied on her via hidden cameras in the girl's locker room, the bathrooms, in her classrooms. He openly divulged passwords to sites where people like him gathered, and freely disclosed his plans- not yet enacted- to use the series of photos of April he had entitled "The Breaking of A Rose"- as a bargaining chip to trade among like-minded pedophiles.

He had finished signing the confession, typed up as fast as the D.A. could possibly process it, under the condition that he be put in solitary confinement, away from vengeful convicts and away from traitorous dolls.

No evidence was ever found to support his statements about his house being tampered with besides the obvious vandalism.

…

" _My parents dropped me off at my uncle's farm on the first day of spring break, a week before my birthday. They had promised me a nice party, dinner out, nothing elaborate, but I was looking forward to it."_

" _Then Uncle Jay started whining that he needed help immediately, that his workers had quit on him, that his wife had left him, and that he needed me, of all people. I'd never milked a cow, never done any farm work, so I was confused."_

" _Then he started hitting me and quoting Malefides, and it all made sense. Why his wife left him and took both sons, and why I was there."_

" _The farm work was just gravy for him, he wanted someone to beat on. And he did- his favorite thing was to drag a bullwhip through horse manure and use it to flog me for hours."_

" _I only escaped because one of his workers came back to drop off some equipment and saw him beating me. I spent nearly three months in a hospital undergoing treatment for sepsis. Fun little fact- having shit-filled wounds scrubbed with hydrogen peroxide isn't fun."_

" _When I was finally released, mom and dad… mom and dad told me that Uncle Jay was just… ill. That he needed understanding. That he didn't mean to really hurt me."_

" _He promised them he'd get help if they'd just drop the charges. Mom and dad told me if I didn't agree to it, they'd kick me out of the house and make me repay them for the hospital stay."_

" _The last straw was them saying I needed to go back, to show Uncle Jay I had faith in him."_

" _He_ _ **beat me with a whip covered in shit and they wanted forgiveness.**_ _I found someone who was coming here because their parents beat them for getting a B and a C, hitched a ride and now… I'm just waiting for the end."_

" _So now I've got scars everywhere, I'm homeless anyway, and he gets off with… nothing. Mom, dad, if you're listening to this: Great fuckin' birthday present. Really showed how much you love me."_

-Rebecca Johnson, attendee at New Exodus.

…

James "Jay" Johnson had no room for slackers on his farm. You either got the work done, or you didn't. And if you didn't, there were consequences.

For his workers, consequences meant no pay. It didn't matter if something broke, it didn't matter if your partner was late, it didn't matter that a crop failed, quotas were quotas, and not filling quotas meant consequences. Some balked at being docked a day's wages enough to quit on the spot. Others knew they'd just have the same problems elsewhere.

For employees closer to him on the family tree, however, he could use more… _inventive_ methods of motivation.

No dinner. No sleep. No shoes. 10 lashes with the bullwhip for the first offense, 20 the next, then 30, and so on. It worked well with his sons, and he only gave a few reminder lashes now and then to make sure they remembered just how much it hurt.

Then his wife had left him in the dead of the night. She had no money- he'd taken precautions to never give her more than the bare minimum she needed- so the chance of her lawyering up was almost nil, but that was two workers- two workers he could push harder than anyone else- gone along with his nightly recreational activity of choice.

He needed to go into town for more feed. The farmhands he had were working tirelessly to pick up the slack caused by the recent batch of quitters- planting, cleaning, and repairing broken equipment for the seventh time.

He walked over to a pair of young men working to clean out the barn of manure and dirty hay. "Have it done before I get back, or no pay." He said gruffly before walking off.

It was an impossible task- the barn would take half a day to be complete to his satisfaction and the trip would take two hours, tops. Add to the fact he knew those two boys were living paycheck to paycheck, and he would feel inclined to almost feel sorry for putting them on the spot like that.

Going hungry never killed anyone. Besides, he had a reputation to keep.

He counted his blessings as he turned out onto the road, a rattling beneath the pick-up reminding him he'd eventually need to get an axle fixed… along with the seat belts, long wore out from being used to tie down hoes and other equipment. There was time safety was a choice, not a mandate…

He'd gone too far with his niece. The intent was to break her down so she would be an obedient part-time worker and instill some much needed humility in her- who the hell let a girl wear make-up at that age?- but he had just…

It was like potato chips. You would tell yourself five chips, no more, and suddenly the bag was half-empty. He told himself five lashes, no move, and suddenly he's dragging the whip through manure just to get the point of who was boss through her head.

He was going to have to dock a lot more wages if he was going to pay his brother back for her hospital stay, part of their agreement in return for not pressing charges.

His brother was always a softie and a moron, and sure enough, he'd managed to wrangle 'one more chance' with Rebecca later this summer. So he couldn't use the whip- Rebecca didn't need to know that part of the agreement, and just the threat would be enough to convince her to perform other duties that needed doing… _urgent_ duties, unfulfilled ever since his wife cut him off.

The rattling under the truck started getting louder. It figured that of course something else would break when he was strapped for cash.

There was a crunching noise, and Jay decided then and there that _screw it,_ he'd take it to a part shop first thing when he got to town… he stepped on the gas, determined to make it before the whole damn thing fell apart.

His steering wheel suddenly jerked sharply to the right, pulling the truck, now going 60 on a 40 mile road, headlong into a ditch.

In a split second, he realized the barbed-wire fence parallel to the road was now directly in his immediate path as he was hurled through the shattered windshield…

…

Ms. Butcher, finally out on bail, parked in front of her apartment, and let her head lay on the wheel for a few precious seconds.

She'd gone too far, this time, and unlike the other idiots involved in this debacle, Christina Butcher could read the writing on the wall.

Klein High School as they knew it was _finished._

The teachers that were not involved in the framing of Jeremy Duncan had left in disgust. Thorn had tried to rein in the rebellion of students openly decrying the injustice by making all grades zeroes. That had accomplished two things: pissing off the students and their parents even more, and leaving them with nothing to lose.

They had not collaborated a solid story. The idea was that several adults all saying 'he did it' would be enough for any jury or doubter. Witnesses and cellphone cameras had made their story crumble, and their own surveillance equipment only served to damn them even further- showing a confused Jeremy Duncan arriving at Ms. Butcher's classroom, opening the door a brief second, and then leaving just as quickly.

Jeremy had taken one look at her, remembered nothing good ever came of being around her, and left without so much as flipping the bird.

Ripping at her clothes, running out the door half a minute later, and screaming rape was her attempt to salvage the situation, and for a few days, as Jeremy was beaten by parent and police officer alike, she thought it had worked.

Then some asshole named Pierce had given the press a photo of Jeremy attempting to eat an entire cheeseburger in one bite, coincidentally catching a clock that indicated if Butcher's story about how Jeremy had mercilessly assaulted and violated her for hours was true, then Jeremy was also a time traveler.

It was supposed to be simple. Ruin Jeremy's life. Teach a lesson. Make Jeremy thank her for ruining his life. Then laugh when his compensation was revealed to be the life lesson and a GED test at 24 or 28. Maybe she would have been generous and let him keep the change when she patronized whatever burger joint he was forced to work at.

His parents had refused to sue the school on his behalf- after all, they had agreed to the idea- but that wouldn't stop him from finding a pro bono lawyer and suing everyone. The fines from the police and the city over the false report were going to put her on a ramen diet for months alone. Fortunately, he had stormed off to that damned New Exodus thing- that would give her time to think.

She got out of her car, trudged up the steps to her apartment, fumbled for her keys. A nap would clear her head…

She opened the door to an empty apartment.

Stark. Barren. Clean.

She closed her eyes, opened them, repeated the process several times, not believing what she saw… or didn't see, as the case was.

Everything was _gone._

…

April Patterson saw the news on a laptop, saw the newscast… but she couldn't believe it.

"Holy shit." An Xiao exclaimed softly as they read together.

Dregs had gone down. Hard. Apparently someone had devoted themselves to making his life a living hell, doing everything from sabotaging his home to swapping his drinks with urine, which eventually had drove him to run out into the street, screaming and naked, raving about ghosts and his doll collection losing their heads.

Her abuser broken mentally, witnessed naked and raving in the street, pleading to be sent to jail and believing vengeful spirits were attacking him. That was good news, no matter how you looked at it.

Loud laughter over by another group of teens, huddled around another laptop, got her attention. What was unusual was that Jeremy- who had been sullen and depressed since he'd arrived, was doubled over with laughter, tears streaming from his eyes.

She and An left their group of mostly girls to go see what was so funny- An could probably use the laugh more than anyone else.

She approached Jeremy, who was frantically trying to compose himself enough to breathe. "What's so funny?"

"Butcher… everything… gone." He got out, holding up a hand, taking a few deep breaths. "Someone… someone got into her apartment and took everything."

April blinked. "Like, her TV and jewelry?"

"No, no… **EVERYTHING.** The furniture. The bed. The toilet. The lights. Everything! God I wanna shake the hand of whoever did it, that is _awesome-"_

"How?" An interrupted.

Jeremy blinked, and the other boys around him stopped laughing as much. "How what?"

"How did they do it? I mean, her apartment probably had cameras or something, right? Someone had to see someone breaking in and taking everything out…"

April had to concede that everything suddenly vanishing made very little sense. The owner of the laptop, a red-haired, chubby boy, clicked and typed. "…so far, the police don't have any clues." The boy said, amusement turning to puzzlement. "…but that doesn't… you would **have** to hear or see something like that. Moving a bed and fridge isn't a covert job."

"And for those of you who hadn't heard-" came a voice from behind them, and she recognized Kyle's voice before she saw him, "-Rebecca's uncle is in the hospital with severe lacerations and sepsis, courtesy of being hurled out of his truck, through a barbed wire fence, and into a very well used cow pasture."

April winced. Granted, Rebecca's story was harsh and gut-churningly outrageous, even compared to her own, and the fate that had befallen him was a just desert if ever there was one, but holy hell, that was _harsh._

"Kinda odd how these all happened one after another, isn't it?" Kyle mused. "Then again, maybe not."

Without another word, he strode off, leaving behind multiple confused teens.

…

In the past few days, what had begun as a plan to reinstitute some semblance of order, even if through fear, in what was quickly becoming a chaotic time had turned into an upheaval.

Her son had not accepted the explanation that the humiliation and pain would be controlled; that no more would be used than absolutely necessary. He had capped off a tirade of the blackest, foulest insults with a single, cold-as-a-December-gravestone dismissal:

"You both are dead to me."

The wisdom chants kept the depression at bay, but it was always there, seeping through cracks, making her doubt herself. If only they had used better methods. If only they had used a fictional strawman. If only they hadn't recruited Ms. Butcher.

Connie Duncan had a lot of 'if only's.

She had thought the years of exaggerations would have made him more inured, but instead the past hyperbole about him parking on the roof or being ungrateful had only served to finalize Jeremy's decision to try his luck elsewhere, despite the protests and demands of his teachers, principal, and his father.

Now, as her husband's dental business floundered due to the scandal, and they both bore the full brunt of a neighborhood that saw them as monsters, where Malefideism had once given total clarity as to the best way to utilize her wisdom-wisdom wonderment, she had doubt. Fear.

According to Malefides' holy wisdom-wisdom wonderment, 90% of children were beyond saving in this day and age. Connie knew deep in her soul that meant there was a very good chance Jeremy wasn't one of the ten percent.

Even now, in the midst of fellow Malefidians at a weekly Wisdom Gathering, doubt plagued her.

"…what's stopping anyone… _anyone_ … from just taking a few guns over to Newden and filling the Liemaker full of holes?" asked one burly Malefidian. "I mean, come on, he's just one kid."

"I'd agree." Piped up another spry looking newcomer, "but let us remember- Liemaker that he is, the truth is that many have gone after him, and those people are dead now. We may not be dealing with a normal kid."

Silence followed. There were… rumors… that Calvin Halgins wasn't just rebellious, but a genuine, bonafide, murderously crazy psychotic whose body count could be attributed to the fact he was so unpredictable that no plan of attack worked on him.

There were also rumors that he could disarm bombs and call lightning down out of the sky, so she wasn't too worried.

All this being said, the facts were plain to see. Calvin Halgins was repeatedly cited in the holy texts as a deceiver of men, a slayer of innocents, and an agent of chaos. Even the media that presented him in a positive light was forced to note that dozens of men and women had died trying to take him down.

"What's interesting to me," noted one usually quiet member, a bachelorette, blonde hair, early thirties, "is that he's not at the New Exodus camp. Nearly every other time these sorts of things have happened, he's been noted to be on the scene, even in cases it didn't make sense. Now, he's apparently just instant messaging people."

That… was odd. Or at least, it didn't fit into the psychological profile that nearly every Malefidian had of Calvin- a glory seeking idiot who would throw himself into the middle of anything noteworthy, then shoot his way out when it was obvious he was in over his head.

"They're forming an uprising." Snarled an elderly man. "First, they separate. Then, they state grievances. Then, they want equal rights. Next thing you know, they'll be robbing us at gunpoint and calling it 'active wealth redistribution' or some nonsensical jargon. We need to get up there and start reminding them who's boss, and we need to have done it several days ago, before Calvin started spreading videos of them whining."

There were angry voices of assent.

In what she called 'moments of weakness', and former friends deemed 'moments of clarity', Connie Duncan knew that 'reminding them who's boss' would mean a body count. The official doctrine of Malefideism said that while intense physical discipline was often necessary, cold-blooded murder was not.

Unofficially, however, Malefideism taught that there should be two distinct parties for 'Purges' conducted by Concerned Elders. There were the Purgers, whose job it was to single out a child or multiple children for termination as well as keep interference at bay- quick terminations of a target were frowned on, to be done only in extreme emergencies; it was better that the death be prolonged and painful. The other group was the Celebrants, white-robed members of the Purging Party that would perform the Wisdom chants and dance to honor Malefides' holy and perfect judgment.

She could say something.

All it sometimes took in a group of Malefidians, James Malefides himself had warned, was one voice of dissent saying _"wait, we're talking about fucking killing kids here. There's something seriously wrong with that."_

At the very least ideology like that could shake a potential Purge Party's resolve. Other times, it could dissolve a group altogether. If she spoke now, it might dissolve whatever bonds they had, or they would excommunicate her. Either way, she would lose the closest things she had to friends after-

 _That's how Malefideism gets you, Connie! You made a bad choice, and rather than admit you messed up, you want to hang around people who told you that the worst decision of your life was actually pure genius, and_

Stop.

 _-you don't want to fix things, you don't want to apologize, you want everyone to tell you how great you are, even when you know, deep down, that you have gone too far_

Stop. It.

 _-your son, Connie! How could you do that?! How could anyone think framing their child for rape and then beating them senseless was a good idea? Are you completely_

 **How wonderful and wise I am! How wonderful the world will be,**

 _-you need help, honey, but until you realize that, we can't walk down this road with_

 **When everyone can understand the wonderful wisdom within me!**

 _-I know a good therapist, she can help_

 **HOW WONDERFUL AND WISE I AM HOW WONDERFUL THE WORLD WILL BE**

 _-Connie please_

 **WHENEVERONECANUNDERSTANDTHEWONDERFULWISDOMWITHINMEHOWWONDERFULANDWISEIAMHOWWONDERFULTHEWORLDWILLBEWHENEVERYONECANUNDERSTANDTHEWONDERFULWISDOMWITHINMEHOWWONDERFULANDWISEIAMHOWWONDERFULTHEWORLDWILLBEWHENEVERYONECANUNDERSTANDTHEWONDERFULWISDOMWITHINME**

 _Connie please just listen!..._

 _ **HOWWONDERFULANDWISEIAMHOWWONDERFULTHEWORLDWILLBEWHENEVERYONECANUNDERSTANDTHEWONDERFULWISDOMWITHINME-**_

"-we can't afford to hold back just because some of our own might be caught in the crossfire. Agreed?" the head of the Malefidians, Brice Whethers, looked directly at Connie Duncan, the one person who had family on the campgrounds they were planning to attack.

"Absolutely." She agreed without hesitation.

As they discussed where to buy what they'd need for such a massive attack and whether to ally with other groups of Malefidians, she realized that she'd thrown her son under even a greater bus.

It got easier each time, she'd found.

You started small, a fabricated story where your child was the bad guy, careless or ungrateful.

Then you graduated to blaming them for more and more things, then punishing them for those things, even when they were completely beyond their control.

Finally, one day, you're signing your son's own death warrant, because he is saying what you did- conspiracy to frame him for a rape that never happened- was wrong, and you just can't accept that.

…

" _I know you've heard it before, but the reason I'm here is this forgiveness bullshit."_

" _I'll try to keep this short. For five years, I've been dealing with these neighbors. Their son, Jacob Knots, went to the schools I did. Jacob is an… asshole. There's no other word for it. He started out by practicing those professional wrestling moves on me when he was 11 and graduated to kicking me down stairs and pelting me with rocks."_

" _But they have a little kid, she's six, now. And about the time I'm thirteen, they need a babysitter. I say no. Jacob's mom and dad do this "please please please" chant over and over and over, and I finally cave in."_

" _Worst job I ever took. She screamed non-stop, shat everywhere. They stiffed me on pay, saying money was tight. Then their son kicked me out the door- literally- and they laughed. And my parents made me go back when they said they needed sitting again."_

" _My parents never stood up for me. Not once. I told them about the assaults, about losing teeth when Jacob swung a chair into my face, but all they would say is "he has emotional problems" or "they're going through hard times, and they need help, please, honey, please, honey, please please please…", and every time I thought things couldn't get worse, they did."_

" _Because you see, when I wasn't babysitting a shrieking hellspawn and getting stiffed for it, or being assaulted by Jacob the ape, I was at home with two sisters, one older, one younger, who both made life a living hell for me. Brittney, my older sister, 'borrowed' my computer I bought after mowing lawns, infected it with a virus that wiped out all my files, then when I repaired it, she threw a fit until Mom and Dad let her keep it. Princess… no, seriously, that's her name… Princess took my 3ds and microwaved it as an 'experiment'. And mom and dad grounded me for not keeping it hidden AFTER they had forced me to let her play with it. Selective memory, I guess."_

" _So one day, Jacob breaks my arm with an armbar, and I finally call the cops and a pro-bono lawyer to just… get one set of horrible people out of my life forever. That's when dad goes… fucking nuts. He throws away my crappy laptop that I bought with money I earned working part-time at a computer store, forces me to quit that job, then tells me I'm going to be spending the summer both doing chores for the Knots family and overnight stocking at the grocery store for half what I was earning at the Computer Store. He just kept getting worse and worse, waking me up in the middle of the night and making me run, or do push-ups on my bad arm, and one day he tells me he's decided I'm going to go into the Marines, because he wants an Marine son."_

" _I can't deal with two families trying to kill me, man. I just… I just can't. Derrick, if you're seeing this, I didn't want to quit, my dad forced me to and beat me with a belt when I said no."_

" _Mom, dad, sisters, the fucking Knots… if you're watching this…"_

" _Burn in hell. All of you. Especially your goddamned little shit-factory."_

-Brian Teller's interview with Calvin Halgins.

…

Kyle Creekson rolled over in his sleeping bag. It wasn't the first time he'd slept on a hard surface; innumerable times his parents, in fits of anger, had decided he wasn't fit to sleep on a bed and had locked him in the garage, no pillow, no blanket.

 _Resist the devil, and he will flee from you._

"Shut up." He snarled.

 _You're stronger than this._

He opened his eyes. He was in a brightly lit field, not in a tent with two other boys as he was when he'd laid down to sleep. Stupid dreams…

 _I can help you-_

"No." He snapped, getting out of his bag and walking in the opposite direction of the voice.

 _He will use you. He will drain you dry, and then he will cast you aside when he has no more use for you._ The voice wasn't coming from one direction, it was as if it was being broadcast from around him.

"Well, 'he' actually _did_ something for me, so as long as I take your fan club down with me, that's fine with me."

 _This isn't you, Kyle._ The voice was calm and reassuring. _I know you're angry. I know you're hurt. But this-_

"SHUT UP!" Kyle yelled, slapping his hands over his ears. "JUST SHUT UP!"

 _You're lashing out in anger. Let me help you-_

"Help me?" Kyle said in disbelief, dropping his hands. " _Help me?_ You had **SIX FUCKING YEARS TO HELP ME!** "

 _Kyle-_

"No! FUCK YOU! I was beaten by that… cunt for laughs, and you weren't there. A grown man beat me bloody, held me down, and fucked me in the ass, and those were the _mild games,_ and you weren't there. I was framed for something that never happened, everyone bought Ms. Jennings bullshit because it was _convenient_ , and you. Weren't. There."

Like a torrent of hate and rage, the accusations spilled out of him. Supposed omnipotence be damned, he would have his say…

"I WAS BEATEN THREE TIMES A WEEK FOR SIX YEARS, AND YOU WEREN'T THERE! I WAS HATED AND SPAT ON, AND YOU WEREN'T THERE! I SLEPT ON A HARD CONCRETE FLOOR, TRYING TO GET SOME SLEEP BECAUSE I KNEW THEY WERE GOING TO SEND ME OVER TO A PEDOPHILE'S HOUSE FOR 'DISCIPLINE TRAINING', AND **YOU. WEREN'T. THERE.** "

The voice was silent.

"So take your message of mercy and forgiveness and shove it up your ass. Hell, I'll even do you one better than Mr. Mallory did me and let you lube up first."

There was a long silence.

 _I'm sorry._

He awoke with a start, the soft snoring and breathing of the other boys evidence they hadn't heard his rant.

Kyle turned over, trying to get comfortable. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he felt a… satisfaction.

It bothered him briefly, then he fell asleep, smiling at a vision of a sobbing, desperate Mallory trying to escape an infinite prison that flooded with lava, burning again and again.

…

" _What would Jesus do?"_

" _I dunno, what_ _ **would**_ _Jesus do? Maybe he'd tell our parents, our teachers, or whoever is currently trying to kill us to back off. Maybe he'd heal the hand one girl got chopped off by her uncle overseas when he thought she stole something. We don't know, do we? I've heard a lot of stories from all of you, and not one of them ends with 'and Jesus came down and fixed things'."_

" _Now I'm not stupid. That phrase means act like Jesus. Forgive. Be kind. Be understanding. The trouble is, that phrase and Jesus' name are used too often by the wrong people for the wrong reasons."_

" _What would Jesus do when daddy or mommy throws you down the stairs, or when hell, a random stranger who just got an erection from reading Malefides' book decides to take a chair and crack you over the skull from behind and pummel your prone body until he's dragged off? The insinuation is forgive. Forget. Accept the offender needs your help."_

" _Pardon me if I don't want to use someone who can shrug off crucifixion as an example for my life. I don't get better after three days. My wounds get infected, and then my dad likes to pour rubbing alcohol on them, and make a few new ones for good measure. But hey, I'm not trying to disrespect the guy. I mean, if everyone acted like Jesus was said to act, we'd have no war, no poverty, no conflict. Problem is, the people who ask this question rhetorically are content to keep acting like Satan while expecting others to act like Jesus."_

" _You all know the argument that it makes no sense to expect Jesus behavior from someone you treat like a convict, so let's move onto using his name- or any other religious figure's name- as a rationalization for Malefidian-style punishing."_

" _Myself, even before I got accused of stealing, what was and was not 'godly' was used way too often to exclude me from things other kids enjoyed- yeah, you're all nodding already, you all know the drill. Video games were ungodly. Halloween was ungodly. Cartoons were ungodly. Comics were ungodly. Sodas were ungodly. Pizza was ungodly- Yes, I shit you not, my parents insisted the delicacy of the gods was a tool of Satan. The internet was ungodly. Writing stories was ungodly. The list went on and on."_

" _But beating a kid until they were lying on the floor, black and blue, unconscious with open wounds? Totally acceptable."_

" _And I used to wonder, just how the hell they took a religion about redemption and mercy and turned it into a justification for beating the ever-loving shit out of kids, and finally, finally after so matter years of waking up in a pool of my own blood and piss, I think I have an answer."_

" _The Father, Son and Spirit are a farce. Allah, Buddha, whoever, they're just things to mask their real holy trinity- the hand, the rod, and the belt."_

" _I'm willing to wager that you've all come to the same conclusion I have- someone who uses assault as a first resort as often as they can has no place to talk about forgiveness."_

-Kyle Creekson

…

The news reached April fairly quickly that some anonymous donor had dropped off several large crates of food and drink.

Which was good, because as justified as she felt in getting the fuck away from her parents, the fact was that no one had really planned ahead- or had been able to plan ahead for, with their limited resources- food for a bunch of disenfranchised teenagers.

Now? There were pop-tarts, hot pockets, sodas, veggies, everything they needed and more to hold out a little longer.

A line had formed. Someone had the foresight to start campfires and started using flat stones to cook some of the food.

Her stomach rumbled as the aromas wafted her way. Soon, she assured herself. Soon.

"Awesome, man, we have supporters-"

"Gotta be a billionaire, maybe that Wayne dude-"

"Guys, they didn't send only food, they sent guns-"

"Gotta protect ourselves…"

April was so busy mentally planning her feast that she almost neglected those last two lines of chatter.

 _Wait, what?_

She blinked. Even she believed guns + teens = bad things, especially when a lot of them were pissed off…

It suddenly occurred, either out of distrust or paranoia, that maybe someone who sent teens a crate full of guns _might_ not have their best interests at heart.

…

Kyle really, really wanted food. He really needed it, having lived off starvation rations at home, even after being found innocent- giving back 'too many privileges at once' would only lead him down the path of rebellion, his parents said, and privileges included a menu beyond mostly bread and water meals.

But the voice said wait. And the voice had not steered him wrong before… why was it doing this now, starving him when food was in reach?

He watched enviously as others gathered around campfires, eating, drinking, laughing, convulsing, screaming…

 _Oh._


	7. Hedonism and Nihilism

Tiger Chronicles: Exodus

Chapter VI: Hedonism and Nihilism

…

You may wonder why I've been slow in updating. I've been thinking of how to end this book, and unfortunately it will end sooner rather than later- I don't want it to be all filler, you deserve better than that.

DISCLAIMER: Certain preacher-types in this story, even though they have good points in some areas, are not, I repeat, **not** persons you want to emulate. At all. Seriously.

…

The good news, as it was, was that the effects of the food delivered were found only after a few people, and those afflicted were subdued before they could cause anyone- or themselves- severe harm.

The bad news was that no one was stupid enough to think that a crate of semi-automatic weapons and hallucinogen-tainted food and drink arriving on the same day was a coincidence.

It was concluded it was an attack; an attempt to make them destroy themselves.

Up until that point, many dismissed the Exodus as a bunch of whiny teenagers throwing a glorified temper-tantrum…

…

Barry Wilkins knew direct criticism of R.A.W.'s bio-warfare department, at his level, would result in nothing but pain for him, and pain for him, he had decided long ago, was to be avoided at all cost.

He was nevertheless biting a hole in his tongue refraining from what he felt were critiques of _very obvious flaws._

Fortunately, Gathwells did the venting for him, animatedly raving.

"Potency levels that trigger within _seconds_ of ingestion, so that everyone is immediately aware the food's poisoned, and a crate full of loaded guns _right beside the food_. Idiots! We are fucking saddled with idiots!" she railed.

 _Napalm. Lots and lots of napalm._

It was a crude solution, and he hated to be so uninventive that the best idea he could offer at the table was 'burn everything really good', but they had tried subtlety- or what idiots they had working for them considered 'subtlety', and that had got the Exodus brats sympathy and real, untainted donations of food in exchange for handing over the guns.

So now their targets looked mature as well as capable of rational thought. Lovely.

Burning a campground and hundreds- thousands?- of whiny teens alive appealed to him on a basic level, but he knew that it would martyr them and rally others.

He had been given an unthinkable reprieve with the nukes gaffe by virtue of some asshole named Superman fucking things up. There would not be another reprieve.

 _Superman? Seriously?_ The indignity of having his magnum opus foiled by someone with not even enough imagination to think up a better name for himself still rankled him.

Grant, by now, would have called order, or told Gathwells to sit down and shut up, but it was clear he was upset with the situation as well. Landers tried to remain calm, but her posture indicated disappointment. Derricks was on his fifth cup of coffee, trying to recharge from several sleepless nights.

Only Malefides seemed truly calm. "It's a setback, no doubt." He said quietly. "But I would not go so far as to say that all is lost just yet."

What would have to happen, Barry wondered, for Malefides to finally concede shit had hit the fan? Would an army of metahumans beating down the reinforced titanium doors be enough to make him lose his cool?

Because the teens of the New Exodus had not acted as erratically as they'd hoped, the media was all too ready to paint them as victims, with the tainted food and weapons being an obvious attempt to drive them to kill themselves. The intent, of course, was to make them appear erratic and out of control, with the spin on the story being that they had smuggled the weapons into the park of their own volition.

Having a few heroic teens subdue their drugged friends, call ambulances, and shut down what was supposed to be a bloody massacre did not help their cause. Nor did the generous donation of food and sanitation equipment from Wayne Industries.

"The problem as I see it," Malefides said unprovoked, "is that the general attitude of this room- and R.A.W. in general- is that our battles should be won in a single stroke. Granted, there are situations that call for unsubtle, direct application of firepower, but to say we're losing just because our opponent didn't fall down in one punch is giving up far too soon."

"What our long-term goal should be is to make the common mentality that it's adults vs. kids. That our targets feel they have no one to turn to in authority, and that the adults feel that if they take the kids' sides, they'll be stabbed in the back." Malefides explained as he continued. "Let's remember- if a person survives a carjacking, they typically don't feel good about surviving. That the attack occurred rattles them, and every other instance of crime just aggravates the paranoia. That's what we need to shoot for: making these kids realize that every single moment of every single day, we will be out there, ready to rip them apart, and any resistance is only delaying the inevitable."

Barry kept his mouth shut as he surveyed the reactions in the room, deciding to not betray his conclusion:

Malefides wasn't playing _their_ game anymore.

The game R.A.W. was playing, always was playing, was hurt as many children in the worst ways possible, and if it brought about a utopia of obedience then fine, if not, repeat step 1 until the sun burned out.

The game Malefides was playing was something else entirely.

He had no friends here. You were valuable as long as you had something to contribute, and what Barry felt he brought to the table was insight on how to hurt children and a demonstrated willingness and proficiency at handling operations. There was no delusion in him: if he became a liability, the most grace he'd get was a warning his time was up, time enough to use one of many cyanide injectors on himself.

He didn't need an enemy.

He had heard enough to know rivalries and animosities bred like rats here, and that while on paper you weren't supposed to kill members without a good reason, what constituted a good reason was a lot broader than the outside world. Hence, you had to be very careful about what you saw and what you claimed you saw, what you heard and what you claimed you heard, etc. If an accident happened to a rival and you proved you could do their job, there were only shrugs.

He had sloth on his side- if you acted like you had no clue someone had done something they shouldn't have, you weren't a threat, and thus the attitude was 'dealing' with you was a waste of energy and precious time.

But Malefides was _not_ like the others. He had little care for rules, regulations, or, disturbingly, the laws of physics and thermodynamics.

He didn't need him as an enemy, but…

…and this was a massive but…

Just because someone here wasn't an enemy didn't make them an ally. No one would speak up for another, certainly not for the neoidentified.

It sank in, as he took notes on their next plan of action, just how truly alone he was.

…

"I've been accused, already, of trying to make you all hateful."

Somewhere in the back of Kyle's mind, the fact they would sit and listen to _him,_ a boy at least four years their junior in multiple cases, preach to them, was beyond staggering, but he pushed it aside, and let the voice within him speak as it had.

"Let me bring the accusations out into the open. I appreciate you reposting my… uh, what'd we call it? A 'sermon'? Okay, fine, sermon. Yeah. Some people came to the same conclusion you did when I just… stated the obvious- that the situation is fucked. This isn't a divine revelation or a Holy Jesus prophecy, it's just me saying what everyone's thinking."

It was a simple tactic. _I'm no one special, I'm just pointing out facts._

"Other people, mainly Malefidiots and their sympathizers, are saying that I am trying to deliberately make all of you hate them. That deep frying kids, shooting kids, trying to poison kids, demonizing kids, holding down and raping kids isn't making you hate them enough, that I'm trying to make you hate them even more."

"You know what?" he said, pausing to let them listen.

"They're right."

Disturbed looks, concern, blinking in confusion. Time to act fast.

"I am definitely, 100% absolutely trying to make each and every one of you hate their guts."

Some of the gathered began to look at each other in confusion.

"Because without hate, _without hate…_ if you have the counter-argument to the enemy's lies about you, if you know their misdeeds, if you can point out every single wrong they've done and every law they've broken, but you don't have the hate to do it, then you're a plastic spork in a knife fight."

The understanding began to spread among them, a few sat back down after standing up in indignation.

"If you can hit a bullseye at the range at 80 yards with a glock, if you can make molotovs, thermite, and IEDS, if you have knowledge of every martial art and can disembowel someone with a pocketknife in two seconds, but you don't have the **hate** needed to take a life… you are an empty clip with a broken spring in Afghanistan."

There were shouts of agreement, the fire began to build.

"If you have the power to leap buildings in a single bound, the strength to shatter mountains, the speed of a bullet… If you have the gift of sorcery and can make the seas and mountains bow at your command, if you can call down fire on those who have wronged you, but you **DON'T. HAVE. HATE, THEN YOU HAVE NOTHING!** "

There were amens and applause. Oh, the _irony…_

"Without hate, you won't have the strength to drive home the killing blow! Without hate, you'll waste time arguing about whether or not it's right to fight back against the people who are killing you! WITHOUT HATE, **YOU ARE ALREADY DEAD!** " he roared.

There was a silence.

"Hate sustains." He said softly. "Hate allows us to survive when all else fails. When your parents turn on your, when your teachers lie about you, when the police conspire to frame and kill you for kicks, when the entire system is rigged to not only make you lose, but to ensure you **suffer,** every step of the way, hate will sustain you when by all rights you should have put a gun to your head long ago."

"And oh, yes," Kyle continued. "Hate has been demonized. Hate is always called a bad thing. I'm not talking about pithy racial hatred or religious hatred. I'm talking about hating those who hurt you. That's not being evil. That's not being mean-spirited or violent. Hating those who have deliberately and repeatedly hurt you is a natural response. And doubtlessly you've been taught that this perfectly natural, perfectly reasonable response is _wrong._ I mean, sure- if you do something wrong, your parents are justified in reminding you of your unforgivable failure day in and day out, your teachers are justified in their draconian punishments, and the police are justified in making swiss cheese out of you because you put your hands on your head the wrong way. But if you so much as show reluctance to trust the person who was plunging a knife into your back five minutes ago, you're…" he paused, sighing. "…I got told it's 'harboring resentment'. What else are they calling it? 'Rejecting God's gift of forgiveness'? 'Dwelling on the negative'?"

Kyle allowed his exasperation to show through.

"But I'll be straight with you. Hatred or forgiveness, holding on, letting go… many of you already know this, so forgive me for saying old facts- Either way, you lose. Forgive and they'll plant a fresh knife in your back, and call it forgiveness therapy or some other nonsense. Hold a grudge and they'll decide to make your life hell to teach you 'humility'."

"Now you would be within your rights to say, 'Holy shit, Kyle, that's a pretty bleak image you're painting there! Are you saying I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't?' Yes." He said sadly. "Yes, I am saying **exactly** that. For some of you, that's a massive kick to the gut, knowing there's no option that ends with you not being someone's punching bag, and I'm sorry for that. For most of you…" Kyle shrugged sadly. "It's par for the course."

"But that's the bottom line, ladies and gentlemen! I've said it before, you've heard it before, but I'll say it one. More. Time. There is **no** win condition. Too many of you are far too familiar with that one teacher. It doesn't matter what you write. It doesn't matter what kind of paper you use or whether you use pencil or ink. You will always get a zero, no matter what, and the most he or she will ever say is "I never got it." In that kind of case… when there is no pleasing those in authority… you may as well do whatever the hell you want."

"Am I being nihilistic? Fuck no! This isn't just emo-whiny 'I tried so hard and went so far' bullshit, we live in a world where the reality is that there is a cult, growing every day in number, of adults who hate us for being young and want to ship us off to even worse adults who torture little children to death. That's the comparison of our goals right there. You want to get a good job, have fun, and fool around with a guy or girl, and they want to let some sadistic pedophile flog you to death with barbed wire while they praise themselves for being wise."

"I know I've talked your ears off, so I'll get to the point. We are unequivocally at war with these assholes. They've killed our friends. They've demonized us and are trying- yes, even now- to get the government to give Malefides authority to set up more camps and yearly 'draft buses' to pick up any kids or teens they deem a threat and ship them off to camps to die horribly. We are at war… and the only sane thing to do is hate the enemy."

…

" **ARE YOU FUCKING OUT OF YOUR MIND?!"**

Elly Patterson recoiled at the viciousness of her eldest son's shouted interrogation.

She had expected understanding and another person in her corner, who would understand that there weren't any pedophiliac overtones in what **they'd** done, that April was, as teenagers were wont to do, taking things way too personally.

That wasn't happening, here.

"I've known you two resented April for being born for years. We all did. And I bet you anything that you succeeded at least several times in making her wish that she hadn't. But I thought you'd have the decency to just tell her to leave at eighteen, not try to hand her over to a pervert!"

Mouth agape in fury, Elly could not believe the accusation.

"How dare you?" she hissed, wounded. "How dare you accuse me of-"

"How dare I?! **HOW FUCKING DARE YOU?!** You two stripped her naked-"

"Not naked, just down to her underwear-"

"-forced her into a slime machine or whatever for his sick fantasies-"

"-we didn't know he had those fetishes, he said it was for entertainment-"

"Oh Jesus Christ, mom! He paid you five hundred dollars to humiliate your own daughter so he could get his rocks off!"

"Listen, you-" she snapped, pointing a finger at him, trying to cow him into submission even as she realized the 'I am your mother' card wasn't going to work… "-April's always been full of herself, and she needed a lesson in humility…"

"Oh, **FUCK YOU!** Humility?! You, of all people, have _no fucking right_ to tell ANYONE they need to be humble-"

 **SLAP.**

He only winced briefly. There was no contrition in his eyes, only pure, undiluted hate.

It then occurred to Elly Patterson, that maybe, just maybe… she'd finally crossed so many lines there was no going back…

"You're dead to me." He said coldly.

Her son slammed the door so hard the window cracked as he stormed out.

Her husband stood beside her, mute and useless, giving her a helpless look as her son and his wife drove off.

Elizabeth's reaction to the news had to simply cut her off completely- refusing to return calls, texts, or emails. Old friends had reactions ranging from stunned disbelief to vehement disowning.

She summed up her thoughts as adequately as she could.

"I need a drink." She grumbled, heading to the kitchen.

…

John Patterson was making some very hard assessments about his current lot in life.

It was very steadily, very slowly dawning on him that years of resentful treatment of April as a burden would _not_ mitigate the damage caused by the actions done at the end of the year bash at April's school. It hadn't been the final straw, it had been the final anvil.

April was gone. Not just gone for a while, not just moved out, but, he realized as it hit home just how badly he'd burned bridges, completely and utterly gone. She wouldn't return- she'd ask to live with Elizabeth or Michael. Whatever threadbare bond he'd had with her was vaporized.

Everyone- _everyone_ was turning against him and Elly. His dentist business was tanking as clients bluntly told him that they'd be taking their business elsewhere. His assistants had quit one and all. He'd be selling his equipment at a loss at best.

The only person left in his corner was currently working on her second bottle of discount red wine.

One voice in his mind suggested it was time to start over. Somewhere else. Maybe explore a career as a hermit. Breaking the news that he felt it was time to separate to Elly would be a nightmare, though…

Another voice chimed in.

 _Why tell her?_

Sinking ship rules- Your loyalty was to the lifeboat. There would be time for apologies after survivors were counted and the dead were tallied for.

A glance at Elly confirmed she was drinking wine in great gulps, something that preceded a long nap from which she was not easily awakened from.

John Patterson looked around him. One daughter had already openly disowned him. His son had explicitly said they were dead to him. It wouldn't be long before all he had left in his corner was a soon-to-be alcoholic wife.

If ever there was a time to bail, it was now.

…

Susie took a drink of her water bottle, focusing on the reporter rather than the camera.

She hadn't dressed up or put on make-up. She was a t-shirt and jeans girl, bare feet because it was her house, and if the world didn't like seeing the scars from where psychopaths had tried to kill her, then that was their problem.

"So, Susie, what's your take on why so many teens are leaving behind families to go to these Exodus camps?"

Katherine, a blonde smart looking thirty-something reporter, was civil enough, and that had made her humor her request for an interview- the reason why she'd chosen Susie, of all people, was that she was someone who had been through something that outweighed most of the complaints the Exodus teens had.

Most. Not all. She still believed in a just and loving God, but what Calvin had told her- and she knew he was holding back the worst, to try and spare her- made that difficult.

"It's because they don't feel safe anymore."

"You mean, due to the R.A.W. attacks?" Katherine pursued.

"It's not just a feeling of being unsafe in their city, it's about feeling safe at home. I don't know what it's like to have a parent betray you, but I imagine it's like having your heart ripped out of your chest. And the thing people that say 'they're just overreacting' forget is that these betrayals… they're not just showing off baby pictures or embarrassing stories. These teens have been assaulted. Framed. Humiliated. Their parents threw them into life-threatening or degrading situations and then demanded forgiveness and obeisance."

"But don't you believe in forgiveness?" Katherine asked.

"Yes- when someone else is sorry and won't do it again." Susie clarified. "We've all heard the story of Rebecca Johnson. Dropped off a week before her birthday on her uncle's farm, celebration canceled so she could help him with farm work. Not great, but not abuse so far. Then he worked her like a slave and flogged her with a whip he had deliberately dragged through manure."

Katherine winced visibly.

"That's the attitude we're seeing more and more of in 'punishaholics' today. They might not always have a copy of 'Get With The Program', or be a R.A.W. agent in disguise, but the sadism and the need to hurt someone weaker than them is still there. Corporal punishment is addictive for the punisher. It's an instant solution to instill fear, pain, and humiliation, and like any drug, as the addiction progresses, the punisher needs a bigger and bigger dose. Rebecca's uncle is a prime example of the later stages of the addiction's progression- punishing with the intent to do serious and potentially fatal harm for the sheer sake of punishing."

"But I digress. Her parents, as we know, demanded forgiveness for her uncle, with the threat of hitting her with the hospital bill- for treatment of septic wounds inflicted by said uncle- then said she needed to show she'd really forgiven him by giving him another chance. That's not teaching forgiveness, that's teaching that a grown man can inflict a punishment that would have been lethal had it not been for outside intervention, be granted absolution, then given another chance to do it again. In that case, the only sane solution is to leave."

"You're advocating them running away?" Katherine tried to clarify.

"Yes," Susie nodded. "and I know that's a really terrible thing to have to say, that you're better off taking to the streets than living some place where you could get killed, and I hope they find their way into foster homes, adoptive parents, someplace other than these unsafe homes. I mean, me?" She gave a dry laugh.

"I have parents who supported me through that hellish nightmare. A lot of these teens had parents that threw them under the bus repeatedly. False rape accusations. Public humiliation. These are actions that, if one adult did to another, no one would think twice if the offender served jail time, but in the cases of teens and children, they're expected to instantaneously forgive the offender, or accept responsibility for their own suffering."

"I know I keep coming back to that," Susie admitted, "the 'abuse then demand forgiveness' bit. But that's the beginning of a long cycle of abuse. If an abuser can get their victim to believe that they are responsible for the abuse, and not the abuser, it becomes all that much harder to break free. Highweller tried that with me, repeatedly. When that failed…"

She took a breath, trying not to shake.

Unwanted, flashes of that… _monster's_ attacks hit her. Students and teachers mowed down in a murderous example. The kidnapping and trial, hours on hours of driving to a place where Highweller savagely beat her, then put her on trial for a bombing _he_ attempted… a hospital barraged by bombs and homegrown terrorists.

She swallowed. That monster was locked away, beaten and broken, awaiting a needle in the arm.

"…when that failed, he was willing to hurt anyone he could. These people… these Malefidians, or whatever they call themselves are nothing new. Be it Highweller devotees, Malefidians, Concerned Elders, or whatever name they choose, it's all the same- abusive people trying to seek what amounts to permission to continue the abuse."

Katherine nodded. "Regarding the Malefidians, do you have anything you want to say to them?"

Susie thought for a moment. "No."

Katherine blinked, confused. "Nothing?"

"They've made it very clear. 'We won't think, we will kill. We won't listen, we will steal. We won't stop, we'll destroy.' That's the war chant of an irrational people, and you can't reason with someone who chooses to be unreasonable."

Katherine pursed her lips. "One last question- are the rumors true? Is there something between you and Calvin Halgins?"

How the hell was she supposed to respond to that?

How did you explain that a boy had replaced your dreamtime fantasies, and that the happiest dream you'd had in a while was him chasing you through a rainy field, that you needed him in your life, and that…

"Yes."

Simple. Succinct.

She'd say nothing more.

…

CONFIDENTIAL: TOP SECRET

ACTIVITY LOG OF CALVIN HALGINS

CURRENT THREAT: ALPHA-5 (Subject is capable of potentially causing catastrophic damage, but shows no inclination towards wanton destruction. Interview with Sergeant Derkins also suggests energy issues may prevent subject from continuous manifestation of powers.)

Three more confirmed cases of activity consistent with 'warper' capabilities were confirmed across the U.S. recently, the victims of which were offenders whose victims had agreed to interviews with Calvin Halgins.

Christina Butcher, a teacher at Klein High School in (REDACTED), recently charged with filing a false police report and conspiracy to commit defamation, reported her apartment robbed. Reports indicate that the apartment shows signs of wear and tear- foodstains, dust, etc., but everything not initially installed in the apartment (plumbing, light fixtures, etc.) was removed. Security footage shows no tampering with Butcher's apartment from the outside, but does indicate activity in attached file (REDACTED) where a refrigerator suddenly disappears. Given more pressing concerns, recovery of Butcher's property is not a priority.

Orville Dregs, currently facing charges for sexual harassment and exploitation of a minor, surrendered himself to the police recently, suffering what initial reports say to be fits of paranoia or a psychotic breakdown. While no footage exists of the supposed events, what information was gathered from Dregs and police reports indicates a short campaign of using warper abilities to wage psychological warfare on Dregs until he finally suffered a psychotic break.

James Johnson, recently cleared of assault charges against Rebecca Johnson, was involved in an auto accident that resulted in multiple life-threatening lacerations and sepsis after being hurled from his car through a barbed wire fence into a cow pasture. Given that Rebecca Johnson's interview recounted how she was savagely assaulted with a bullwhip coated in manure, the likelihood of the crash's location and projection of James Johnson's body being coincidence is unlikely.

The insinuations of these events are something of a relief- we have evidence that Calvin will not always resort to lethal means of taking down a target- assuming he meant for Johnson to survive. Compounded with the notable lack of projected activities we'd expect to exploit warper abilities- rigging of lotteries, gambling, etc.- this report would recommend we have a softer group contact Halgins to direct him.

As suggested by many of our members, full investigations will be made concerning the parents of the victims recorded in Calvin's blog concerning their ability to safely raise a child and possible criminal charges.

…

He wouldn't mind waking up from a coma, he'd decided.

Calvin Halgins was more than willing to accept that the past year or so was nothing more than a self-martyring, self-exalting fantasy if it meant that one day, he'd wake up and none of it were true.

And sometimes, he dreamed he did.

He woke up in a world where R.A.W. was just a crazy conspiracy idea he had, and there was no Malefides, no Highweller, just him, his tiger, and a girl he was going to start being nicer to, slowly mending fences…

Yet every time, he woke up to hell.

The girl he loved had been shot, beaten, kidnapped by walking cancers that had filled him with so much hate that he'd seen Highweller, reduced to a catatonic, PTSD-laden vegetable, clearly tortured in ways profane and vehement, and all he could think was- _Good. He deserved it._

Children had died in droves- were dying in droves- there were places where R.A.W. was torturing them to find new ways to torture them even worse, and people were _buying their book,_ even after the author had been revealed to be a disgraced pastor who joined R.A.W. after condemning most of his congregation's children to die.

Grown adults listened to horror stories about torture-facilities hell-bent on killing children, and in their infinite wisdom, said "Hey, could you teach me how to do that?"

The Exodus poisoning should have surprised him. He wished it surprised him.

He sat there, in front of his computer, not doing anything. Emails to be checked, interviews to be done. Outside of his computer, he could do any number of things. Play outside. Play video games. Go over to Susie's house and kiss her one more time, because the reality was that any given hour one or both of them might die due to some idiot who read Malefides' books…

Idily, he checked on the outcomes of his latest flagrant abuses of his power…

Butcher was now facing charges and without a functional place to live, reportedly refused service at several hotels. No one wanted to give refuge to a teacher who devoted herself to ruining her students' lives, it seemed.

Dregs had been allegedly "involved in an altercation" in the county lockup he was in while awaiting trial, which he knew was was so much jargon for 'he was knocked down while multiple biker gang members took turns riverdancing on his face'.

James Johnson was suffering from multiple lacerations, fractures, and sepsis the likes of which you would normally only expect to get if you were flogged then flung into a septic tank. News of what he had done had gotten around, and a fundraiser started by Rebecca's parents to help pay for his hospital costs was quickly quashed, meaning the farm owner would be footing his own bills.

Many of the comments for the articles detailing the fallout called the havoc he wreaked 'the judgement of God' or 'karmic justice'.

"You've been busy." Hobbes noted, keen eyes taking in the sites as Calvin browsed.

A pause.

"Sooner or later, you're going to have to make a decision." Hobbes voice was grave, unlike any other time he could recall- this was the kind of tone a friend took with you when a matter of life and death was at hand. "People want you **dead.** Not arrested, not disgraced, **dead.** Right and wrong won't matter to them, and neither will collateral damage. Each time you use your powers, you make another thread that can be traced back to you. It's not a matter of if, it's when. You'll make a mistake, or forget to account for something- a reflection caught by a camera, a witness, whatever. And when the people who want you dead realize what you're capable of, they're going to drop any pretense of subtlety. It will be like Good Friday every day, with them going after your mom, dad, Susie, anyone they think hurting will hurt you."

Calvin opened his mouth to retort, but no cunning one-liner or clever rebuttal came.

"I know you're angry." Hobbes' voice was sympathetic now. "No one with a shred of their soul left could hear these stories and not be angry. But fucking with the individuals doesn't accomplish anything in the long run, and just gives R.A.W. another lead. They're already using nukes, and that's with you just saying that they're wrong."

"But that's just IT." countered Calvin, turning around. "They're resorting to using nukes. This isn't going to deescalate if I just shut up, they'll keep doing worse and worse until one of us dies!"

Hobbes' face was grim. "Then are you prepared?"

Calvin blinked. "Prepared for what?"

"Are you prepared to kill them? _All of them?_ "

It should have been such a stupid question. He **had** killed them. In numbers that made conspiracy groups think he was some sort of vat-bred killing machine. But always in defense of himself or another. Never as an act of aggression, always as a response.

Even the bombs he set off during the attempted nuking were in defense of his city.

The closest he'd ever come was with Johnson, whom he'd not cared if he lived or died, but even then he hadn't had the urge to make sure that the man stayed dead.

Was that what it was all going to come down to? Either waiting for R.A.W. to eventually kill him, or actively seeking out their bases for termination? Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he'd known he'd eventually have to become more aggressive and lethal in his dealings. Every time he chose to only react to threats, R.A.W. learned what didn't work and what came close.

"So you're saying I'm going to have to eventually choose between dying and mass murder?" Calvin asked, trying to get a clarification that didn't confirm his worst fears…

"Yes." Hobbes said with finality.

Kill or be killed.

The law of the jungle.

…

'Eureka' moments came to those of all walks of life. Good, evil, the bookwise and bookdumb, the lawful and unlawful.

Sometimes these moments were just common sense, like a drug dealer deciding to wear decent clothes and not blast rap music on their way to a drop, or a cop realizing that a ten-year old probably didn't fit the profile of the criminal they were looking for.

Other times, the moment gave insight on things no one else would pick up on. A detail just out of place. The realization that things were too perfect, too organized, and that a façade had been erected…

For Barry Wilkins, the Eureka Moment came as he researched the problem of burning a campground to ashes.

The Feds were already breaking down their doors- two more compounds had fallen to special forces, costing them training dummies and manpower. A napalm attack would only exacerbate that problem.

As they convened in the white room, the confidence his stroke of genius around 2 AM must have shown in his face, because Grant raised an eyebrow as he sat down.

"I trust you've got a solution?" he asked acidly.

"If I may, Judge Grant… as has been stated repeatedly, one of our major concerns is that these insurrectionists are being seen as rational, responsible persons. A firebombing would be investigated, and when traces of any chemical agents, say, napalm were found, they would be martyred."

"However… if they were seen to be destructively irresponsible, even if the death toll was none or only in single digits, then we've regained ground. We've shown that allowing them any time by themselves is a recipe for disaster; that they are _incapable_ of acting on their own without their actions resulting in wanton and massive damage… say, a campfire away from the grounds in the woods sparking a wildfire."

 _That_ got their attention. Judge Grant was clearly contemplating the tactical value of such an operation, and Malefides…

Malefides looked surprised. And impressed.

"And you propose to do this how?"

Barry shrugged. "Tranq a male and female in the night, drag them off the campsite, set up a campfire with a large sleeping bag, condoms, and booze. One-night teen stand gone wrong. Hell, maybe even do multiple instances and with drugs, just to hammer home the point."

Quickly, he added. "I am dismayed as much as anyone that burning all of them alive is no longer a feasible option." He said quickly. To suggest a swift death for a non-adult, unless such a thing was unavoidable, reeked of treason here. To suggest _avoiding_ killing or torturing was nothing short of obscene. "But according to the standards we have repeatedly analyzed for determining whether we have succeeded or failed, _martyring_ our victims is one of the worst case scenarios. If we make them look like idiots who can't control their hormonal impulses or simple campfires, we're one step closer to making people like the Liemaker Calvin look like lunatics to be ignored."

Derricks and Gathwells shared looks. "Once all is said and done, we can start promoting our as of yet unlinked camps. Then we can burn or boil them as we please. I should note that if we are to act, we must act soon. So far, weather in the area has been overcast and sunny. Any rainfall will make starting a natural looking forest fire all the harder."

Grant looked to Landers and Derricks.

Derricks looked into his coffee. "It's cheap, it doesn't take a lot of manpower, and we're running out of time."

Landers shook her head. "I've got nothing. If nothing else, it will make them look stupid, and that's what we need now."

Grant nodded. "I'll begin putting a team together."

…

Bruce Victor had been told, in fiery revival services, that one day the profession of being a pastor would be outlawed. Martyrdom fantasies about black-armored troops with Mark-of-The Beast armbands beating down the doors of clandestine churches, desperate attempts to hide the last bibles, providing salvation to anyone who would listen before Jesus returned. He had been prepared to go to prison, to suffer for Christ.

Now, he was in prison, but for very different reasons.

The courts were not sympathetic at all to his reasons for waging a six year long campaign against a child, six years old when it started, over less than two hundred dollars. The eventual revelations that his parents had sought his counsel to force Kyle to forgive both Jennings for assault and Mallory for sexual assault had only damned him further. That both crimes had continued well after he had spent eight hours breaking Kyle down, pleading then demanding total absolution of both…

Bail was denied with prejudice.

His lawyer was advising insanity.

And his cellmate had introduced his face to the edge of his bunk seven times before a guard had tazed him into submission.

Alone in a cell. He'd never believed that would be an _improvement._

Broken, facing a short trial with a judge who had no sympathy for religious fanatics, Bruce Victor did something he hadn't done in decades, and prayed.

On his knees, quietly, as to not wake the other inmates, "Father God, I come to you in my darkest hour. Please, show me your will, and how to make this right."

Silence.

"You know," came a voice from behind him. "If I didn't know you, I'd think that was almost sincere."

He turned.

Kyle Creekson sat on the unoccupied bunk adjacent to him.

"How the hell did you get in here?" Victor asked when he found his voice.

"Does it matter?" he asked. "I'm the only one listening to you, after all."

Victor blinked.

"Oh, come on. You haven't listened to Him for fifteen years. You tell people what they want to hear, then pick verses that support your sermons, and somewhere after telling me I needed to 'forgive Mr. Mallory in silence' and before you told me that all the head-stomping was discipline, _God gave up on you._ "

Victor recoiled, like a child rebuked.

"Even your prayer is hollow and empty. Meaningless spiritual form apologies, peppered with ritualistic words and gestures, hoping He's a genie you can evoke whenever you need to. Maybe it would have a little more meaning if you'd bothered to try listening or talking to Him within the last decade, but you had more important things to do, like encouraging people to flog me with belts or punish me for stealing church offerings. Yes, even as you would look down, mid-sermon, see the edge of that envelope sticking out from your podium, and realize, "oh, I guess he didn't really take the money after all.""

He knew?

Of course he knew. Kyle wasn't stupid. He knew Jennings wasn't sorry. He knew Mallory was going to continue the games. The only way he was able to get forgiveness out of him was a concentrated, hours-long session that amounted to psychological torture with food and bathroom deprivation, breaking him until he'd say anything to get it to stop…

"Hurts, doesn't it? Breaking down to the point that you try to speak to the man upstairs, and He won't even take your calls. I can sympathize, you see. Six years of praying, begging, offering the rest of my lifetime if he would just make it stop… and the only way it did was because some homeless schmuck you hired to look good happened to push your podium aside to sweep."

"And when you were **forced** to admit you were wrong? **Forced** to admit I didn't do it? You didn't apologize. You didn't even say you'd made a mistake. You sat me down in that room, with my homework-ripping teachers, my abusive parents, Mr. "Fuck-Kyle-In-The-Ass-Until-He-Shits-Blood" Mallory, and that cunt from hell Jennings, and tell me I need to forgive everyone and keep mowing the bitch's lawn and keep having 'discipline sessions' with Mallory." Cold, calm fury radiated from Kyle as he listed the wrongs done him, young eyes pinning him to the spot.

"Even after that? God didn't bother to speak to me. No, the author of creation couldn't be assed to say sorry to a kid whose childhood makes the crucifixion look pleasant."

Then, after a moment of silence, Kyle's mouth twisted into a smile.

"But His competitor? Much more understanding."

Oh, **fuck.**

"The other guy understood that what happened to me was **wrong.** That after someone goes through what I did, the last thing on their mind is forgiveness. What someone like me wants is vengeance. By the way, did you know that Jennings was afraid of clowns? Or that Mallory was pyrophobic? I didn't until a few days ago. And let me tell you… for all Jennings bitchiness, and all Mallory's tough guy exterior… they both screamed like _bitches._ "

"You sold your soul." Victor said, horrified and shaken to the core. Had he failed this badly? Had his failure as a minister been so utter and complete that Kyle thought burning in hell forever was worth-

"Yes, you did fail that badly." Kyle snarled. "Jennings was the worst of you all… she went beyond me, made sure three kids that tried to question what I went through or, in Jesse's case, help me… she made sure they all got shipped off to that death camp and tortured to death. You remember Jesse, right? You screamed at him when he tried to help me up, calling him a sympathizer to the devil. Mr. Mallory I have a personal hatred for, but I admit being biased. Being sodomized repeatedly as a kid will do that. But you?"

And now the scarred face of Kyle was absolutely furious, and Victor, knowing full well that prayers for protection or rebuking would be unheard, backed against the wall, scourged by the fell might of his death glare.

"You made it very clear to hundreds of kids that torturing a suspected thief- a thief you _knew_ was innocent- that was fine, but showing mercy or questioning evil was wrong. That's your legacy, Victor. You taught every teen and child in our church that when you saw someone being beaten mercilessly for a crime they were only accused of, the right thing to do was to either join in or shut up." Kyle shook his head in disgust. "Jesus would be so proud of you."

Kyle was silent a moment. "You know… I had trouble, thinking of what I was going to do to you. Jennings? That was simple. Killer demon clown, rip her apart, and continue to do so in hell. Mallory was dead by the time I got to him, so he's playing 'the floor is now lava' for all eternity. Spoiler alert: he hasn't won. My parents I'm going to have to spend a whole week planning for. You? I asked Lucifer for ideas, and even then, I was coming up short. Entire histories of torture and barbaric executions, and nothing seemed to fit. Then, finally, I came up with the perfect idea."

Victor tried to pray, but all he could manage was blubbering bits and pieces of the Lord's prayer, eyes locked on Kyle in some vain hope he could evade his initial strike…

"Nothing." Kyle said venomously.

For a minute, Victor was certain he'd misheard. The boy had confessed to tailor-made hellish tortures for two of his worst enemies, and the punishment he had for him- the pastor who knew his innocence but kept silent- was _nothing?_

"Nothing is the very worst thing I can do to you, because you will _never repent._ You will never say 'I'm sorry' and really mean it, because that would involve admitting you were wrong. And with every year, as your body starts moving slower and the arthritis gets worse, you'll know the day is coming when your pathetic little husk of flesh finally gives out, and you get to explain yourself to God."

"And you'll keep telling yourself- 'I'm just working up the courage'. 'I'll repent and admit all my wrong doing once I'm prepared'. But the years will go by, Victor. People will spit on you and rage at you, and you'll keep insisting that you really meant well all along, just like you did with me. Then, one day, time or circumstance will end you. Maybe it'll be a heart-attack. Maybe the shame of all of this crashing down will drive you to alcoholism and you'll die with a record BAC. Or maybe you'll just get a bullet in the head from someone who thinks you've earned it." Kyle fantasized, gleefully imagining all the ways Victor could meet his end.

"However you bite it, it won't be by my hand. I want you to watch your church, your legacy, the reputation you've built up for decades crash down like a house of glass cards, and I want you to try to desperately put the pieces back together as they crumble in your hands. I want you to realize just how screwed you are a little more every second of every day. I want you to hear the doors and windows slam shut one by one. The classmates from Theology class shunning you. Your mother disowning you. Your church falling apart member by member, until one day you come ready to preach for an audience that just doesn't come."

"Oh, I know what you're thinking." Kyle said dismissively, as what Victor misinterpreted to be mercy turned out to be someone much more horrifying. "You think you can cheat me; repent and then hang yourself or blow your brains out. And hypothetically speaking, you could." Kyle shrugged. "But both actions would mean admitting you're wrong. That you fucked up, big time. And you've never been one for that, Victor. It's why Jeannie left you after you couldn't admit being in the wrong about anything- a few days before you were going to propose, wasn't it? It's why you got fired from two jobs, and yes, if you'd just fessed up it was you made the mistake, Wilson would have promoted you. But no. You lied and said it was someone else's fault, and Wilson had no room for someone who didn't have the guts to fix their mistakes. So you told everyone you had a 'calling from the Lord'." Kyle shook his head. "It's just one big stack of lies, isn't it? Stacked sloppily, hastily, just barely balanced, and now they're all tumbling down."

Kyle glanced at an imaginary watch. "Well, it's been fun watching you realize just how thoroughly you've ruined your life, Mr. Victor, but I really must be going. I've got my own sermons to preach now and a budding congregation. Oh, just for clarification- I can't control your free will, so feel free to prove me wrong on either or both about the repenting or offing yourself… if you can."

Then he wasn't there. There was nothing he'd expect, no distortion in reality, no puff of smoke or even a 'pop'. Kyle Creekson simply was, then _wasn't_ anymore.

There was no making this all go away, he finally realized. This wasn't a temporary setback that would end with him having new sermon material- he would be in this jail until trial, and from there go to prison for God-only-knows how long.

All his life, he had been- and there was no other word for it- a coward, unable to face his mistakes, blaming them on circumstance or other people. He'd always seen himself as a flawless martyr, unjustly put upon by hordes of idiots and slews of mishaps. The church was supposed to prove them all wrong; Bruce Victor wasn't some Know-Nothing-Know-it-all, he was a man on a mission from God!...

And now, his church, his last shot at proving them all wrong, was going to crumble, with a foundation built on happy lies, feel-good thoughts and delusions of victimhood.

How many times did he have the opportunity to bring the decline to a screeching halt?

 _How many times had he failed?_ Certainly the prime time was when Jennings made the accusation. If he'd calmly refuted her, chastised her for baseless accusation, he'd have lost her and earned the respect of his congregation for wisdom.

No, even before that. A wise pastor would have called the police to deal with Jennings the second abuse was evident. A righteous pastor would have shot Mallory the second he admitted- with a nauseating smile- he liked hurting Kyle.

Here, in a cell slightly less filthy than his soul, Bruce Victor understood he was nothing even remotely approaching wise or righteous.

He was the false prophet, and he was going to perish horribly.

He was still screaming when the guards came to drag him to the prison medical room.

…

Malefides, for the second time since the power had entered him, was _impressed._

Kyle's surgical disassembly of Victor's false faith wasn't given to him by the same power. The power had provided the revelations about Victor's past, it had shown him the pastor's thoughts, but those were so much paints and brushes, and what Kyle had created was nothing short of _art._

So this is what the holy bastard felt when he was dealing with the centurion. Maybe the apes had something to them after all.

Satisfied, Malefides went back to planning the next moves he would need to make, feeling more pleased than he could had dared hoped to feel in a long while.

It _was_ good to work with professionals.


End file.
